


will you wade with me (you and me all alone)

by heartshapedcandy



Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-07
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-06-23 06:42:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15600570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartshapedcandy/pseuds/heartshapedcandy
Summary: a post-salem’s war team rwby follows a commission to vacuoorruby & weiss don’t know how to handle their current relationship limbo and yang & blake just want to get brunch





	1. The Desert

The desert is still.

Though the air is thick with dust, the sky is a cloudless sheen of blue. The sun feels bigger here, closer to the horizon, and sunlight blurs the distant ridge of dunes into a shimmering mirage of heat.

Ruby crouches behind the broad trunk of a cottonwood, pressing her back against the gnarled bark hard enough to sting. She ditched the weighty comfort of her cloak when they got to Vacuo, and now she misses the added protection. Her cotton blouse is thin, but the heavy leather of her corset chafes in the heat. Sweat rings her underarms and she bleeds freely from a gash above her hip. She can feel a course layer of dirt coating her skin, and she wipes at her forehead with the back of her hand, blinking sweat out of her eyes.

She senses movement in her peripheral, a flash of blue, and straightens, tightening her grip on Crescent Rose until the metal bites into her palms. She can feel the hum of Weiss’s aura from a tangle of low scrub and nettles to her left and she makes a vague gesture with her hand that she knows Weiss will understand.

_Wait. Steady._

Ruby closes her eyes.

The desert breathes.

Ruby inhales slowly, matching its rhythm, forgetting for a moment the blood dripping down her side, the aching throb of her muscles, and even the steady pulse of her teammates’ auras from their concealed crouches in the wild tangle of desert scrub surrounding the lush, green oasis.

She feels the shift of sand beneath her feet and the quick, fluttering heartbeats of the slim-footed jackrabbits that burrow beneath the hard, cracked earth. She exhales in time with a quiet breath of wind, the air stagnant and warm despite the breeze, and loosens her grasp on Crescent Rose to press her hand flat to the ground.

Blake murmurs a warning from her roost high in the branches of the cottonwood, and Ruby hums an acknowledgement. Ruby gestures to Yang and earns a nod in return. The oasis they fringe is only an acre across, fed by an artesian aquifer that surges deep under the earth. The Alpha is close, somewhere among the oasis palms, slinking below a broad-leafed camouflage.

It’s enough room to hide, but not for long.

Ruby feels the moment that the fight changes, senses the movement before it even happens—a rustle in spiny ferns, a warning call of a hawk winging overhead. She barely has time to gesture at her team to attack before the Alpha explodes from the underbrush. The first swipe of its paw— massive and armored by thick, leathery skin—sends Yang flying hard into the trunk of the tree, splintering bark and shredding foliage. Her breath leaves her chest in a loud grunt, and her hair ignites, a soft, burnished light, subtler than it used to be, controlled.

Ruby hears a hum of concern from the branches, Blake’s soft noise of worry, and watches as Yang’s eyes briefly fade from red to lavender, mouth quirking from a snarl to a grin.

“I’m okay, baby,” she calls, eyes still fixed on the Alpha that’s pacing now at the edge of wood, frothing and furious. “It’s going to take more than that to hurt me.”

“Can the flirting wait,” Weiss calls, darting close at Ruby’s signal, sprinting from glyph to glyph, slashing deep at the Alpha’s flanks and chest. “There’ll be time after we live.”

“Oh, please,” Yang says, she pushes away from the trunk, skin crackling. “You’re just jealous.”

She fires a few hard punches at the Grimm while Blake swings down from the branches, squeezing rounds off with practiced ease, Gambol Shroud’s ribbon wrapped up her forearm. .

Weiss’s eyes flash. “I resent that.”

“Guys,” Ruby snaps. “Focus.”

Only Blake has the good grace to look chastised and Ruby rolls her eyes. She twirls Crescent Rose, flicking the clasp with her thumb, reveling in the smooth noise of the extension, oiled metal singing as the blade unfurls and sharpens.

Weiss moves close for a hit and Ruby calls a warning too late, watching the Alpha’s canines catch on the skirt of her dress, ripping fabric and skin in the process. Weiss spins out, hitting the dust hard, Myrtenaster rolling from her grasp. The desert rises to meet her, dry earth cratering, and Ruby feels her chest tighten, stomach roiling.

Her muscles surge with adrenaline and she blinks hard, forcing her eyes away from Weiss, ignoring the swell of nausea.

“Yang, Blake, Bumblebee _now_ ,” she yells, and they snap instantly to action. Blake uses the cottonwood to create momentum, slinging her pistol wide. Yang growls as she catches the hilt in her hand, swinging into an arc with rapid-fire pops of gunpowder before catching the Grimm square between the eyes.

Ruby digs deep into the last reserve of her aura, feeling it wane and flicker, a final burst of speed and strength before she darts forward, saved from tooth and claw by the Grimm’s Ember Celica induced daze. She buries Crescent Rose into the neck of the Alpha, the blade tearing through tendon and muscle, blood soaking her arm to the elbow. She grits her teeth, driving the scythe deeper until it rents the Alpha’s head from its body, ember-bright eyes dulling to black.

She wrinkles her nose, hating the thrill of satisfaction, the low simmer of revenge rising like bile. The air is saturated with singed fur and smells sharply of iron, like wet dog and musky animal fear, dirt and blood churning into mud at her feet.

This was the last of the pack that they had been hunting for days, the crown jewel on the Vacuo contract that kept them busy for the better part of a month. Ruby’s muscles ache and stretch, something popping oddly in her shoulder, blood soaking through skirt and leggings, clotting at her hip. She is suddenly and completely spent, staggering to stay standing.

She resists the urge to vomit, adrenaline fading, aura throbbing uselessly in an effort to heal before—

“Did we get him?”

Weiss’s groan, low with pain and exhaustion, brings Ruby back to reality. Fear surges, heady and choking in her gut, remembering Weiss, prone, cupped in the divot of dry, desert earth.

She drops Crescent Rose on the ground, narrowly missing the Grimm carcass—she makes an absent promise to do a thorough diagnostic check and cleaning later—before sprinting toward the place Weiss went down.

Yang gets there first, sliding to a stop in the dirt, kneeling to meet her. Yang cups a hand at Weiss’s cheek, her calloused palm dwarfing Weiss’s dainty, delicate jaw. Weiss blinks at her miserably, lower lip pouted. Though blood drips from a laceration at her brow, and her skirt is beyond repair, her eyes are cognizant and alert. Yang laughs, tilting their foreheads together, ignoring the sweat and dirt that mingles between them.

“No thanks to you, princess,” Yang says, stroking a thumb across her cheekbone. “You were over here taking a nice little rest while we did all the dirty work.”

Weiss grumbles, slapping her away, and Ruby’s chest unknots and loosens. If they’re already bickering again, then Weiss is going to be fine. They all are. Blake stands over Weiss and Yang, still alert, and Ruby pauses to squeeze her hand, needing the reassurance as much as she gives it.

Blake squeezes back, leaning down to nuzzle at Ruby’s shoulder, head bumping at the hollow of her neck.

“You did good today, Ruby,” she says softly.

Ruby accepts the praise with a small smile, turning her face into Blake’s hair. She thinks she can smell the last vestiges of her shampoo, something lotus-clean and warm, even beneath the layer of sweat and grime.

“We all did,” Ruby says. She exaggerates a frown, tone turning teasing, loud enough for Yang to hear. “Except for your girlfriend. She’s a mess.”

Blake laughs, pinching at Ruby’s cheek. “Hey, she was your sister first.”

Yang looks up from where she still crouches at Weiss’s side, prodding her injuries. “I resent that,” she says, a perfect imitation of Weiss’s pitched inflection, and this time even Weiss laughs.

**

It’s Blake’s idea to head back into the oasis.

“We need to clean up,” she says. She has Yang’s face in between her palms, tilting her this way and that, checking for injuries. Yang is complacent, leaning lightly into her touch, only moving to turn her face against Blake’s hands for quiet, careful kisses that Ruby pretends not to notice.

It’s not that she doesn’t see them kiss all the time, its honestly inescapable, but there’s something too intimate, too raw, about the motion. They are all exhausted, stripped bare and weary, and the way they lean into each other, worn-in and intrinsic, is too much for Ruby to bear.

She risks a glance at Weiss who has struggled to a sitting position, head lolling up at the clouds in a kind of daze, looking impossibly fragile and young, and remembers why.

Ruby keeps sneaking glances while she collects Crescent Rose from the pooled blood of the Grimm, now congealing. She tucks her nose into the crook of her elbow, trying to breathe around the heavy stench of carrion and matted fur. Flies are already swarming to the carcass, and Ruby makes a halfhearted attempt to swat them away.

Crescent Rose has seen better days, the blade chipped and dull, the luster of the red paint worn smooth by the repetition of her hands, but Ruby smiles to see her anyway.

“I’ll have you back in fighting shape in no time,” she murmurs.

“Hey,” Yang calls, any bite dissolved by the smoosh of her cheek against Blake’s forearm. “Stop making love to your gun and grab your concussed partner.”

Weiss’s only response is a faint murmur of dissent, near unintelligible.

Ruby turns to Yang, cheeks flushing. “I’m just doing a weapons check.”

Yang smirks. “Mine don’t usually involve so much caressing and breathy whispers, but.” She turns her head to mime a bite at Blake’s wrist, grinning when Blake yelps. “Maybe I’m doing it wrong.”

Ruby fumbles a comeback. “Yeah, you save that for your girlfriend.”

Yang’s smile grows, all canine and sharp. “You could too if you had one.”

Ruby feels her face flush darker, overly aware of Weiss in her peripheral, and wishes she could blame the sun. Blake, as usual, saves her, her voice a cool balm to Yang’s bite.

“Enough, Yang.” She cradles Yang’s chin between her forefinger and thumb, pressing a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “Let’s get moving before the sun gets any higher.”

Ruby folds Crescent Rose back to its compact storage mode, weary of the blood that still stains the blade, undoubtedly gunking the gears in transition. She sheaths Crescent Rose at her back before picking her way toward Weiss, kneeling by her side.

Weiss focuses on her slowly, and Ruby winces at the cut over her brow. She absently reaches to touch it, pulling back before she can make contact.

“Ouchie,” she says softly. “You okay, Weiss?”

Weiss nods, her eyes are dazed, distant, and Ruby watches them slowly sharpen and focus. Her pupils are dilated, iris a thin sliver of blue, and Ruby swallows hard at the deep, wide cradle of her gaze.

“Just a little dizzy,” Weiss says, finally. She prods carefully at her brow, flinching slightly. “It will fade when my aura recovers.”

Ruby sighs, relieved. “Can you walk on your own?”

Yang appears behind Ruby, Blake already wading into the trees, and grins. “I’ll carry you,” she offers, bending to scoop Weiss into a bridal carry, one hand fitting under her knees before Weiss slaps her away.

“I don’t need any help,” Weiss snaps. “Get your Neanderthal hands off of me.”

Ruby stifles a laugh and Yang pouts. “Fine.” She brightens. “I bet Blake will let me carry her.”

Yang strides off toward the underbrush, calling Blake’s name, and Weiss rolls her eyes, taking Ruby’s offered arm. She makes it to her feet before she lurches unsteadily to the side, equilibrium skewed, legs buckling. Ruby catches her easily around her waist, forearm curling at her back. She is keenly aware of the press of her fingers against the notch of Weiss’s hip, the tear up the side of Weiss’s skirt that leaves a sliver of thigh and waist bare, and she steadies both of them while trying to keep herself upright, as well.

Weiss is light, almost too light, a byproduct of two weeks of food-scarce hunting and limited water supply, and she leans full-body into Ruby’s side, tucking her head under Ruby’s chin.

“I’m tired,” she says, too low for the other’s to hear. Her words hum against Ruby’s skin and she almost shivers despite the heat. “Can we rest now?”

Ruby pouts, sympathetic and endeared by the warmth of Weiss nuzzling against her throat. “Soon.”

Ruby uses her free hand to raise Weiss’s chin, ducking her head low until their eyes meet. Weiss squints up at her, still slightly dazed, blood dried sticky across her brow. Ruby’s heart sighs and aches, she can feel her pulse ringing in her head, and blames exhaustion instead of the heavy-lidded eyes catching on her own.

Weiss reaches out a hand and brushes Ruby’s bangs, mop-heavy and shaggy, out of her eyes. Her hair is past her shoulders now, a far-cry from the choppy bob she wore at Beacon, but still highlighted by her trademark streaks of red.

She let Yang redo the dye job a few months ago, crowded around the bathroom sink in their small, temporary apartment in Patch. It had been their last day alone, before a barrage of contracts and missions, before Blake returned from a solo trip home to Menagerie and Weiss from Atlas. Just the two of them, Yang shampooing her hair and getting soapsuds in her mouths and laughing so hard they got tummy aches. Ruby thinks she misses that day worse than anything, her last reprieve before Weiss came back with stories of some Atlas girl and hickeys staining the pale skin of her throat.

Her last day before things got confusing and twisted and Ruby’s easy, unspoken teenage crush developed into something rough and jealous and choking. Weiss is her partner, they understand each other better anyone else, but sometimes Ruby thinks this secret is going to swallow her whole, as toothy and unforgiving as the dark maw of an Ursa.

Ruby aches for the push-pull of the beginning, when Weiss was protective and sharp, and Ruby never thought twice about her young, blind schoolgirl affection. They went from push-pull to pull-push to this dizzy kind of in-between, a limbo, where anytime Ruby thinks about changing direction, Weiss has already fumbled the other way.

Most days Ruby convinces herself that the longing is a product of their closeness, too many beds shared in double hotel suites, too many nights pressed close in their travel-size pup tent. She convinces herself that the way Weiss look at her, soft and deep and close, is a partner thing.

Just because two souls are bound by fate in an unending fight against chaos and manifestations of literal evil, doesn’t mean it’s anything more than platonic.

Even when Ruby wakes up aching and wet from blurry dreams of pale skin and a sweet rosebud mouth, even when Weiss spends days away at the apartment of some errant city girl, and Ruby’s mood turns foul and snappish until she returns.

“Hey,” Weiss says, still carding her fingers through Ruby’s hair. “Where did you go?”

Ruby blinks. “Nowhere, I’m sorry.”

Weiss purses her lips like she doesn’t believe her, her cheeks dimpling as she pinches the corners of her mouth tight. “You need a haircut,” she says. She strokes her thumb over Ruby’s eyebrow before tugging lightly on her bangs. “You look ridiculous.”

Ruby coughs out a laugh. “You don’t mean that.”

Weiss smiles, this small quiet thing that creases around her eyes. “I don’t mean that.”

Ruby pulls back, using her free hand to shield her eyes against the sun, peering into the oasis. “We’re going to lose them if we don’t hurry.”

Weiss answers with a small shriek of panic and Ruby’s stomach drops. She immediately reaches for Crescent Rose, scanning at the horizon. “What is it? What do you see?”

“Ruby,” Weiss gasps, a hand covering her mouth, “your arm.” She squirms away from Ruby’s grasp at her waist with surprising energy, grabbing at the hand shielding Ruby’s eyes. “You’re bleeding.”

Ruby’s brow furrows and she looks at the arm in question. It’s covered in blood well past her forearm, viscous and dark, half dried. Weiss claws at her skin, trying to find the wound, her face tight with panic.

“Weiss, Weiss,” Ruby says, trying to calm her, catching at Weiss’s face with her clean hand. “I’m okay. It’s not mine.”

Weiss slows, brow cinched, mouth on a devastating downward tilt.

“It’s not mine.” Ruby shakes her arm out. “See? It’s the Beowolf’s, I promise. I’m okay.”

“Holy shit,” Weiss sighs, the words sounding uncharacteristically course in her mouth. She thumps a hit at Ruby’s chest with flat palms. “You scared me, you asshole.”

Ruby laughs, catching at her hands. “I’m sorry.” She folds Weiss’s hands in her own, bringing them to her mouth without thinking, kissing at her fingertips. “I’m sorry,” she says again, slower this time, swallowing hard when she realizes Weiss hasn’t pulled her hands away from her lips. “I’m okay.”

There’s a beat before they move, and the desert is silent and still again. The purple dunes are a bruise at the horizon, heat shimmering the landscape into a mirror of mirage and light. Weiss’s eyes are wide and inevitable, full lips like two cresting waves. Ruby wants to kiss her so bad she thinks she might die if she doesn’t. She can feel Weiss’s breath against her mouth, can smell salt-sweat and warmth. She starts to lean in.

A peak of laughter shatters the silence, Blake and Yang up ahead, bickering playfully, and the tide breaks and changes.

Weiss glares, pulling her hands back so she can pinch hard at Ruby’s shoulder. “You’d better be.” A pause. “Who else is going to carry me to this damn oasis?”

**

Weiss clutches tight around Ruby’s neck as they enter the clearing at the center of the oasis. She breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of the large pool, cool, clear water fed by the underground aquifer. Yang is already kneeling at the edge, splashing palmfuls against her dirt streaked face, Ember Celica and jacket abandoned on the shore.

Blake stands behind, unbuckling her belt and peeling her high, dust-coated boots down her legs. Yang turns to flick water in her direction, earning a light shove. Yang is steadily churning the water near the shore into a silt-saturated muddy brown, and if Weiss had more of her faculties she would chastise her.

Instead, Weiss shifts in Ruby’s grasp, burrowing her face against Ruby’s neck, chin digging hard into her shoulder. Ruby hitches her higher on her back, hands splayed wide on Weiss’s bare thighs beneath the ruined scraps of her skirt. Weiss swears she can feel every murmur of Ruby’s fingertips, every whorl and print burning bruises into her skin. Everywhere that their bare skin touches is slick and salt crusted and Ruby’s neck is gritty with dirt, but Weiss breathes her in anyway. Her head is cotton-stuffed and muddled and there is a ringing in her ears that has dulled to a low peal. She focuses hard on the crunch of Ruby’s footsteps in the hard-packed desert terrain, skirting scrub and low, spindled bushes. The sound lulls her like a metronome, and she cuddles closer against her back, tangling her fingers in the front of Ruby’s blouse.

Six year ago, Weiss would be disgusted that the smell of Ruby like this, musky and sweat drenched, layered by sharp notes of copper and the girlish perfume of her hair, would be something of a comfort.

But it is. It means Ruby is breathing and warm and alive. It means they are together. Weiss can feel the steady tempo of Ruby’s heart through the thin cotton of her shirt, a pulse against the inside of Weiss’s forearm. She counts the beats absently, murmuring the tally against the petal-soft skin at the hinge of Ruby’s jaw.

“You good, Weiss?” Ruby says quietly. She turns her head to address her, and their faces are suddenly close, Ruby’s eyes large and moonlight-bright, fringed by the shadow of her dark lashes. The tip of Ruby’s nose presses against her own, an approximation of a thumb war, a playful nudge, brows knocking.

“I’m good,” Weiss says quietly. The words settle between their mouths, an echo in the space against their lips, and Weiss’s gaze falls to Ruby’s despite herself. Her lips are chapped and peeling, and Ruby wets them thoughtlessly with her tongue. Weiss watches, her stomach tight, an ache coiling low in her tummy like a spool of velvet ribbons.

A shriek from the direction of the water distracts her, and she jerks her head to check for trouble, her cheek colliding awkwardly with Ruby’s as she turns. It’s only Yang splashing into the shallows, shedding her shirt as she goes, and Weiss would roll her eyes if she didn’t think it would make her dizzy.

It takes a beat before she realizes her cheek is still smooshed close against Ruby’s, and she pulls away, wriggling her legs until Ruby gently sets her on the ground. Weiss lists slightly, but manages to stay upright. She gestures vaguely in the direction of a drooping willow, its branches bowed low over the springy, dry grass.

“I’m going to sit over there,” she says, shuffling away from Ruby’s side, feeling clearer without the heat of her pressed against her skin. “You should go wash up.”

Ruby fixes her with a steady, direct look, brow furrowed. After a moment she shrugs, dropping her pack to the ground and heading toward the water.

Weiss watches her go.

If she sways a little when Ruby peels off her heavy leather corset and skirt, leaving her little else than a blouse that brushes her thighs and knee high stockings, she blames the concussion.

**

When Ruby finds Weiss again, her face is pink and scrubbed clean. Ruby’s hair is wet, slicked back over her forehead, water dripping down her temples, droplets clinging to the jut of her collarbone.

She stands over Weiss, arms crossed, looking down with a grin. She has a first-aid kit in one hand, and she tosses it at Weiss’s feet.

“What’s cookin’ good lookin’?”

Weiss sighs, squinting up at her, trying to find her eyes against the glare of sunlight at her back. “How much do I have to pay you to retire that expression from your repertoire?”

Ruby winks. “More than you can afford.” She groans as she moves to sit beside Weiss, legs splayed in front of her. She tries to hide the noise with a laugh, but Weiss catches it anyway.

“What did you do?” Weiss asks sharply, moving closer. She rests a hand on Ruby’s thigh, catching her chin with the other, forcing Ruby to look at her, narrowing her eyes at her expression of feigned innocence.

Ruby tries for a shrug, wincing at the motion. Her hands move to cover her side reflexively, and Weiss bats them away. With the heavy corset gone, Weiss can see the gash that tore through the thin cloth of Ruby’s shirt. The laceration isn’t too deep, but it’s enough to need stitches, blood soaking the white fabric of the shirt, re-staining Ruby’s palms.

Weiss hisses a sharp noise of sympathy before turning to Ruby with a glare. “You shouldn’t have carried me with this. Why didn’t you say anything?”

Ruby shrugs before she can catch herself, wincing again, a whine of pain rumbling low in her throat. “To be honest I didn’t even notice until I was washing up.”

“You are such an idiot,” Weiss says, prodding carefully at the skin around the wound, checking for the tell-tale inflamed red of infection.

Ruby’s eyebrows steeple hopefully. “But I’m your idiot?”

Weiss’s lips pull into a frown, guilt and worry simmering low in her stomach. She hides it with metal, her voice acid and sharp. “You could have seriously hurt yourself, Ruby.”

Ruby sits up straighter, her shoulders squared and broad, catching Weiss’s hand between two of her own. “I’m fine, Weiss.” Her voice sounds firm, strong, and she softens when she catches Weiss’s eye. “And you’re fine.” She massages the knuckles of Weiss’s hand carefully, petting over bruises Weiss didn’t even realize she had. “Let me take care of us.”

Weiss bites back the compulsory barbed words, flexing her hand in Ruby’s grip instead. Ruby soothes over the tense tendons of her hand in response, mapping the ridge and valley of her joints, sparking sensation up Weiss’s wrist. Ruby watches her steadily, and Weiss looks back.

Ruby looks older. It hits Weiss with a jolt, lurching low in her stomach. She isn’t fifteen anymore, isn’t scrawny and gangly, with a voice that lilts and tremors around syllables, baby fat softening her cheeks and dulling her jaw. She’s 21-years-old as of last All Hallows’ Eve, and Weiss pushes down any memories of that particular celebration, of Ruby whiskey-drunk and slurred, lounging across her lap, because it isn’t helping anything.

The cotton shoulders of Ruby’s blouse are soaked sheer from her impromptu bath, her hair already drying in a mess of waves that licks down her shoulders, stopping above her breasts. For the first time, Weiss can see Yang in more than Ruby’s smile. The resemblance follows in the hard line of her jaw and high, sloped brow. In her cocky, dimpled grin. But Ruby’s nose, straight-bridged and pert, and her mouth, pouty and red, with a deep curved Cupid’s bow, and full bottom lip, are all her own.

Scars climb over her collarbones and the taut, muscled flex of her forearms. One pale raised line starts at the notch of Ruby’s throat and disappears beneath her collar. Weiss traces it despite herself, hooking her fingers in the scooped neck of Ruby’s shirt.

Ruby dips her chin to look at Weiss’s fingers before tilting back to her face. “What are you looking at?” she asks, quiet.

The thin, dense leaves of the willow mottle their skin in dappled gray, but fractured sunlight paints a halo behind Ruby’s head, bleeding gold into the dark sheen of her hair. Weiss hasn’t been a particularly religious person since she was a child, when stained glass and scripture and God lost any taste of romance, turned sour in her mouth. But here, crouched in front of Ruby, half-way to her lap, Weiss thinks this is an altar where she could worship.

She remembers Ruby’s question after a long pause, and drags her gaze back to her eyes. “You.”

Ruby’s smile is shy, a little bemused, and she drops Weiss’s hand to press the back her palm against Weiss’s forehead, checking her temperature. “You feeling okay, Weiss?” She leans in, catching Weiss off guard, fitting her palm against the back of Weiss’s neck. She puts her lips to Weiss’s brow, not a kiss, just the prolonged press of her mouth, her lips cool against Weiss’s overheated skin.

Ruby pulls back, fingers still playing with the wispy hair at the base of Weiss’s neck. She looks at Weiss, frowning. “You still feel really hot.” She drags her hand from Weiss’s neck to her cheeks, petting at the flush of her skin. “You’re all red.”

Weiss hisses a rebuke, trying to cover her embarrassment with a flap of her hand. “We’re in the desert, Ruby. Of course I’m hot.”

Ruby hums a small noise of appeasement, but the smile lurking at the corner of her mouth makes Weiss want to smack it off her. Or kiss it away. Whichever. Weiss huffs, reaching for the first aid kit, willing her blush to go away. She knows it’s still there, she can feel the throb of it in her temples, color clinging to her chest, creeping down her breasts.

She snaps open the kit, wiping down her hands with sterilizing wipes before threading the needle. Ruby watches on calmly, only looking squeamish when Weiss reaches for the hem of her blouse.

“Take your shirt off,” Weiss says, trying for something close to casual. “I need to see the wound.”

Ruby smile is wolfish, canines sharp at the corner of her grin. “If you insist.” She pulls her shirt over her head with one arm, careful not to irritate the gash, grimacing as the skin ripples and pulls.

Weiss levels her eyes to Ruby’s side, forcing herself to be clinical, objective. Her sports bra is stained with sweat and dirt, but where it rides up there’s a strip of clean, unmarked skin just below the band. Weiss puts out a careful hand, wiping at the blood around the wound, curling her fingers around Ruby’s back to steady her.

Ruby’s skin ripples and flexes under Weiss’s touch and she swallows hard. Ruby is all lean strength and hard planes, her stomach tense with muscle and ridge. Weiss pets over her stomach before she can stop herself, enjoying the quiet hitch in Ruby’s breath.

Weiss doesn’t realize she’s started to speak until it’s too late, forgetting to choke down the reverence in her voice. “You’re so—” Ruby looks up, surprise flaring in her expression, eyes widening, “—Healthy,” Weiss finishes lamely.

Ruby laughs, splaying a hand over her chest, feigning shock. “My word, Miss Schnee.” She’s affected this low southern drawl, a mockery of the dialect in South Vale, and Weiss is faintly horrified. “You sure know how to treat a lady.” The accent gains traction with every syllable, until the words are a mess of twang and country. “Getting me out of my clothes and plundering my virtue.”

Weiss wrinkles her nose. “Plundering your virtue?”

Ruby flushes, ducking her head in a laugh. “I thought it sounded good, but.” She winces, her voice normal again. “Maybe a little dirty.”

Weiss laughs lightly and Ruby looks pleased. “Maybe a little.”

Stitching Ruby’s wound is an utter distraction. She can feel Ruby’s breath warm against her cheek as she works, and her hair drips droplets of water onto Weiss’s knee, their heads bowed close. Weiss has more experience than she would like stitching up her teammates, they all have, their hands steady and sure. But when Ruby shifts closer, shoulders brushing, her eyes a liquid, gunmetal grey, Weiss’s hand jerks. Ruby yelps, a small noise of pain, but it lances through Weiss like a fatal blow.

“Shit,” she hisses, forcing herself to finish the final stitch, tying off the suture before tilting her eyes to Ruby’s face. “I am so sorry.”

Ruby jostles her with her shoulder gently, running a finger alongside the wound. “Don’t worry about it, it looks good.” She taps her side, sewn shut by a grid of tiny, meticulous stitches, the dark thread stark against her skin. “My hero.”

Weiss busies her hands with disinfecting the equipment, snapping it back into its case. Ruby reaches for it before Weiss can tuck it away, prying it out of her grasp.

“It’s time to take care of you.”

Weiss shakes her off, pouting, feeling suddenly petulant. “I’m fine.” She gestures to her forehead where her aura has knitted the broken skin closed. “It’s already healing.”

Ruby thumbs at her hip, bare through the shredded remains of her skirt. “Let’s wash you off at the very least.”

Weiss feels her cheeks flush, a bolt of heat jolting her core. Ruby is smiling that earnest, careful smile she reserves just for Weiss, still stripped to her sports bra and boy shorts, her long body bare.

“I’m not a child,” Weiss says, “I can bathe myself.” She starts to ease her dress over her head, but the movement makes her dizzy, and she lets her arms fall back to her side, huffing defeat. “You can help me get this off, I suppose.”

Ruby pulls at the fabric, considering the pearled line of buttons trailing up the nape of the neck. Dirt is ground into the cloth and sweat rings the collar and underarms, the skirt ashen and ripped, and she grimaces. “This might be beyond saving, Weiss.” She curls both hands at the bodice of Weiss’s dress. “It might be easier to just—” She rents her hands apart, neatly tearing the fabric in two, peeling the torn fabric down Weiss’s shoulders before reaching for her skirt.

Weiss’s mouth falls open in a perfect circle, her heart thundering beneath her breast. She feels as lace-delicate and ruined as her dress, and as she watches the flex of Ruby’s arms tensing to rip through the ruined scraps of her skirt, she thinks she would let Ruby tear through all of her, too.

Ruby carefully pulls through the hem of the skirt, freeing Weiss from the mangled scraps of cloth, leaving her in tight, black spandex and a sports bra. Weiss feels her heartbeat stutter and skip, her eyes catching on the line of muscle that bisects Ruby’s torso, the ridge where her shoulders meet her neck. Ruby’s side is swollen, and bruises stain the skin over her ribs, flowering into purple-gray blooms, climbing the rungs of muscle and bone. Ruby tosses the skirt and dress to the side, folding her hands carefully over Weiss’s hips.

“Ready?”

Before her team, Weiss never let people touch her. But now, when she goes too long without them, Weiss aches for it. For Yang’s arm slung around her shoulders, thoughtless and warm, for the feather light touches of Blake’s affection, slender fingers stretching out the muscles in her calves during long fireside watches.

But Ruby’s touch lasts, molten to the bone, enough that Weiss feels the memory of her hands long after Ruby lets go. Weiss thinks there would be worse things than letting Ruby burn through her. Her mouth tastes like ash and ember, and she fixates on Ruby’s faint frown, on the dimple of her upper lip, feeling a little lightheaded. Weiss wonders if the concussion is effecting her more than she thought.

A wolf-whistle shatters her reverie, and she and Ruby turn to face the source of the noise; it’s Yang, her index finger and thumb curved into her mouth. She drops them when they turn, waist deep in water, beckoning. “Stop stripping and come join us.” Though she directs her next comment to Blake, voice lowered, Weiss can still hear her and her ears burn red. “It’s like Huntress XXX over there.”

Blake laughs. “Huntresses Gone Wild.”

Yang cackles, reaching out for a high-five. “Two Girls, One Scythe.”

Ruby waves them off, dropping her hands from Weiss’s hip to help her to her feet, but Weiss catches a mottled blush clinging to Ruby’s cheeks before she can turn away.

Ruby positions Weiss in the shallows before wading deeper herself, sluicing water down her arms and neck, careful to avoid her stitches. Weiss sighs at the cool relief of the pool, freeing her hair from its messy ponytail, dipping her head back to soak her hair to the scalp, teasing her fingers through the knotted strands. Yang tosses her a travel size bottle of shampoo, no doubt nicked from their last motel room, and Weiss smiles gratefully. She suds her hair carefully, letting the sweet smelling soap drip down her neck and shoulders, carving pale lines through day old grit and dust.

Yang is busy coaxing Blake deeper into the water. With her hair wet, mermaid slick and long, she looks like a broad, muscled water deity, droplets pearling on dark, tanned skin. Conversely, Blake looks miserable. She’s shivering in her thin, dark cami, her secondary ears plastered against her scalp, flicking unhappily.

“Babe,” Yang croons, “your face.” She reaches out to cup at Blake’s cheek, rubbing her thumb at the soft skin under her eye.

Blake glowers. “What about it?”

“You look miserable.” Yang’s voice is saccharine and sweet, and Weiss focuses determinedly on scrubbing at the pale skin of her stomach.

“I’m cold."

Yang grins, her smile pulling sharp at the corners in a way that reminds Weiss disturbingly of Ruby. “Let me warm you up, then.”

She palms Blake’s thighs, lifting her until her legs wrap around her waist. Blake winds her arms around Yang’s neck, tilting forward until their foreheads press close. Weiss sighs sharply, and she hears Ruby mutter something under her breath, pointedly looking away.

Yang hums lowly, grinning against Blake’s mouth. “We’re upsetting the peanut gallery.”

Blake ducks closer, and Weiss can hear the smack of their lips. “Good.”

Weiss splashes a small wave in their direction. “Cool off, you two.”

The sharp slant of Yang’s smile is the only warning Blake gets. “Good idea.” She bodily tosses Blake into the water, ducking away to avoid the splash. Ruby turns to watch them, face aghast. Blake surfaces sputtering, spewing curses. Before she can retaliate Yang scoops her back into her arms, bridal style.

“Oh no,” she says, cradling a still writhing Blake to her chest. “She’s drowning.” Blake, clearly fine, glares. Yang’s voice is loud and stilted, mimicking the acting on the terrible straight-to-scroll action movies Ruby always forces them to watch during movie night. “This calls for immediate action.” She grins cheekily, making eye contact with Weiss. “Mouth to mouth.”

Ruby audibly groans, and Blake lolls dramatically back in her arms, limbs akimbo.

Yang carries Blake to the shore, laying her gently in the coarse sand. She gropes at her chest over her cami—“chest compressions”—before lowering her mouth to Blake’s, puffing in a breath of air before stifling a laugh. Weiss looks at Ruby, pursing her lips.

“Remind me again when we’re leaving them to fend for themselves.”

“A Team RW solo mission can’t come soon enough.” Ruby looks at Blake and Yang and then back at Weiss. She grimaces. “Oh good, the drowning victim is using tongue.”

“It looks like she’s going to survive.”

Ruby lazily backstrokes toward Weiss before propping herself in the shallows at her side, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Crisis averted.”

Their shoulders brush, the water swells and laps at their knees and thighs, and behind them Yang murmurs messy kisses into the curve of Blake’s neck. Weiss rubs at a smudge of dirt below Ruby’s collarbone and feels her heartbeat beneath her fingers, beating strong and young and summer-bright: _alive, alive, alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more communal bath scenes to come. let’s be real, I blame xena. this fic is alternately titled: weiss keeps getting wet and she hates it. 
> 
> come find me at nevervalentines.tumblr.com


	2. The Storm

Ruby feels cleaner than she has in ages. She’s lying flat on her back on the sunbaked earth, enjoying the throb of heat against her skin, the sting of sunlight on her bare legs. She stretches her arms over her head until she hears her spine pop and lengthen, her muscles edging on a sweet, sore ache. Her side twinges, but her aura reserves are already strengthening, energy coiling under her skin, easing through her limbs.

Yang splays beside her, head pillowed on Blake’s lap, hair fanned out to dry in the heat, smelling like shampoo and sunlight. Blake’s fingers rub absently over her temples, combing through her ruffled bangs. Yang’s eyes are slitted closed, and she turns her head to press a kiss against the inside of Blake’s knee.

Weiss hunches by Ruby’s legs, using her as a makeshift table for a large, creased map. The contour lines that ripple across the paper are enough to make Ruby dizzy. She props an open book on Ruby’s stomach to pin the map, and Ruby squirms as the binding tickles her bare skin.

“Is this convenient enough for you?” She flexes her stomach, threatening to upset the pages.

Weiss lays her palm flat on Ruby’s abdomen in exasperation, pinning her against the sand. “Maybe if you stopped moving.”

She’s wearing one of Blake’s old pullovers, the swathes of dark fabric baggy on her slim frame. She tucks the hem around her knees, one sleeve hanging well past her knuckles. She keeps pushing them up around her elbows absently, even as they keep falling down. Ruby wants to fold the sleeves back for her, to climb her fingers over the ladder of Weiss’s ribs, to bury her hands in her long fall of clean, pale hair. She clenches her fist tight, nails biting half-moons into her flesh. She figures if she holds out long enough the desire will fade.

Ruby makes a playful grab for Weiss’s foot instead, wrapping her forefinger and thumb around the slender taper of her ankle. Weiss huffs but acquiesces, settling down more comfortably in the sand to study the paper. She trails her fingers over the glossy, printed sheet and it tickles Ruby’s abdomen through the projected topography, sending a thrill all the way through to her spine.

For a few moments they settle into a quiet lull, hazy with desert heat, drooping with exhaustion. Ruby lets her eyes drift close. She focuses on the whisper of paper against her stomach and the red blur of the sun, now rounding the vaulted clouds and dropping toward the flat, barren skyline. Weiss hums a quiet noise of interest, tracing a line down the map with her finger, the movement mirrored against Ruby’s navel, stopping just above the hem of her spandex. Ruby shifts, swallowing hard, and Weiss shushes her, tapping her index finger over a small Vacuan town—this time dipping into Ruby’s bellybutton.

Weiss draws a compass rose over the valley of Ruby’s abdomen—north, east, south, west—and Ruby cracks open an eyelid. “You lost?”

Weiss surprises her with a smile, her cheeks pinking from the sun, her neck and wrists ghostly pale in the black oversized sweater. She’s just opened her mouth to speak when a low growl interrupts her, a rumble that starts at the skyline and moves toward them, bringing a wave of cold with it.

Blake stands first. Her sudden movement shatters the calm, upsetting Yang’s head from her lap and jarring Ruby from her daze. She squints toward the desert, ears twitching before settling back against her skull. “We should go.”

Yang sits up, reaching for her tank top and pulling it over her head, thumbing at Ember Celica. “Something coming?”

“A storm,” Blake says. “I don’t want us to get caught in the middle of it.”

Ruby sits up, following Blake’s gaze. Though above them the sky is cloudless and blue, heavy mist muddles the horizon. Ruby can see the distant flash of lightning, igniting the clouds in burnished silver, chasing streaks of rain toward the small, sheltered oasis.

For the first time in weeks, Ruby shivers.

Weiss tucks her map back in her bag, tossing Ruby a clean t-shirt as she does. She stands as she puts it on, pulling Weiss to her feet.

“Where are we going?”

Blake nudges into Yang’s side, ducking her head into her shoulder like it will protect her from the impending rain. “Where do you think?”

Yang sighs, tucking an arm around Blake’s shoulders and turning away from the storm, ignoring a second growl of thunder as it rumbles to a crescendo. “Back to Vacuo.”

Only a loud crack of lightning is enough to mask Weiss’s groan.

**

Sometime on the walk back, Ruby said the wrong thing. It’s a pretty common occurrence, but she isn’t 15 anymore and the fallout still stings. Weiss trails behind the three of them, stewing in a storm cloud of her own conjuring, apparently brought on by a question Ruby asked about her Atlesian girl. It’s not like Ruby even wanted an answer, y’know, she was just trying to be polite. And maybe, a little bit, trying to remind herself that Weiss and her pretty hands and pretty face and pretty, pretty eyes belong to someone else now, too.

They just crossed the city limits. The dusty, dirt-rutted road fades to slick, pot-holed asphalt, and Ruby watches the staccato skyline of pale stone buildings creep closer. Here on the outskirts, scattered suburbs fracture the barren, scrubby terrain. Low trailers hump like metallic dunes in the hard-packed earth, and Ruby chances a wave at a family that lounges by their makeshift front porch in folding chairs of cracked plastic and vinyl. A small faunus girl ducks behind her father’s knee before waving back. Ruby grins, and only Weiss’s huff from behind her wipes it from her face.

“I’m sorry,” Ruby says, turning to look at Weiss, annoyance lancing high in her chest. “I’m not allowed to ask questions, am I not allowed to wave now, either?”

The same annoyance is reflected clearly on Weiss’s face and Ruby has to bite her mouth closed to keep from sticking out her tongue. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to,” Ruby says. Her voice pitches high and she _knows_ she sounds childish but Weiss is closed off again, her head on a haughty tilt despite her bare dirt-scuffed legs and overlarge sweatshirt. She glares at Ruby, arms crossed, and Ruby’s temper rises like bile. “We all know you don’t want to be here, I didn’t force you to come.”

For a moment, hurt flashes over Weiss’s face, a wide-eyed betrayal, but she quickly tempers her face back to annoyance and Ruby wonders if she really saw anything at all.

“Maybe next time I won’t,” Weiss says, and the words bite like a tangible thing, teeth burying deep into the skin of her chest.

“Oh,” Ruby says quiet, and beside her Yang winces and steps between them.

“That’s enough,” she says, sharper than usual, and Ruby’s heart falls and oh, oh, oh.

They approach the city in silence and though they pass a few other families lounging in the dry, wasteland heat, eagerly watching the approaching storm, Ruby doesn’t wave once.

**

The hotel itself is a bit of a splurge, an end of mission victory lap. They’re celebrating a hefty check from the Vacuo City coffers with two separate hotel rooms and bathrooms with actual shower pressure. The building is tucked at the south side of the city in a shaded residential area, splayed along the grassy shore of a canal, bordered by low brick walls and green, opaque water. The building itself is an abstraction of sandstone and sharp corners, with a cascade of tiered levels and hidden courtyards, vine strewn and ornamented in smooth, stone tiling.

The air conditioning of the lobby is a shock after the dry, desert heat, and the cool air tastes synthetic and tacky in Yang’s mouth. It pricks goosebumps along the flesh of her left arm.  
Blake moves toward the reception desk to check them in and Yang watches her cross the lobby before turning to face Ruby who has tucked herself as far away from Weiss as possible, back against a gaudy decorative pillar. She moves toward her and pinches at her hip, careful to avoid her fresh stitches.

“You okay?”

Ruby nods, but the skin between her eyebrows creases and pulls, lower lip jutting.

Yang buries a kiss in Ruby’s hair and taps at her waist. “Hang in there, baby girl. She didn’t mean it.”

Ruby shrugs, forlorn. “Do Weiss and I have to share a room?” She wraps a plaintive hand around Yang’s wrist. “Can I sleep with you guys tonight?”

Yang hisses a breath between her teeth, tossing a glance at Blake across the lobby where she leans against the welcome counter. She’s tapping a credit card between two long fingers and smiling quietly at the front desk clerk, her hair a dark sheet down her back, hip cocked against the counter. Yang feels a thrill of heat, her pulse heavy.

“Yeah, no, I don’t think so, Ruby. Blake and I haven’t had a room to ourselves in ages and y’know.” She shrugs, grins. “I mean—”

Ruby claps a hand over her mouth before she can finish. “I got it, thanks.”

Yang nips a bite at her fingers and Ruby lets go with a yelp. “You and Weiss will be fine. She’s just pissy because she hasn’t showered. You know how she is about hair care.”

“Says you.” Ruby frowns, pushing off the column. “I’m going for a walk.”

Yang watches Ruby walk toward a door set in the back wall of the lobby, leading to a slim, cobbled alley and courtyard, catching the long look she throws back at Weiss before she pushes outside. Yang frowns and turns to Weiss who meets her gaze steadily. She narrows her eyes and watches a muscle in Weiss’s jaw flex and pop. They hold for a few beats, and Yang hardens her face into her best expression of big-sisterly reproach. Finally Weiss huffs, stomps her foot, and turns to follow Ruby.

Yang watches her go before approaching Blake at the desk. The clerk is ringing her up, keying numbers into the scroll mounted on his work station, occasionally sneaking glances at Blake in his peripheral. Yang sidles up behind her, fitting her hips against Blake’s ass, resting her hands over the jut of her hipbones. Blake sighs, leaning back into her, and turns her head to offer her mouth for a kiss.

Yang obliges despite the angle, humming into the warm press of her lips. It sparks a familiar buzz in her stomach, and she tightens her fingers at Blake’s waist, digging her fingertips into the bare skin between navel and hip.

The clerk turns back to them, and startles at Yang’s bulk, noticing her for the first time. Yang grins, her smile sharp, and leans around Blake, plucking the credit card from his hands.

“We all good here?”

He nods, visibly swallowing, and Yang flexes her bicep hard before bending to shoulder their luggage, nudging Blake toward the elevator. Blake waits until the doors slide closed with a faint metallic ding to turn toward her, half-smiling.

“Was that necessary?”

Yang drops the duffel in favor of pushing Blake against the wall of the elevator, boxing her in with her hips. She stoops to press her mouth close to Blake’s, the air an electric hum between them. Blake plays coy, but the spark of her aura gives her away.

“Was what necessary?”

Blake curls her fingers around the muscle of Yang’s arm, digging her nails hard into her bicep. Yang holds back a hiss, watching Blake’s pupils flood her eyes black. “All your posturing.”

Yang shrugs, leaning closer. She presses her mouth against the hinge of Blake’s jaw, tasting warm skin and musky sweat, pain pricking in her arm. It’s not a kiss, but it isn’t a bite either. Just a bruising crush of teeth and skin. She noses at Blake’s cheek, softening her mouth into a careful kiss at her jawline.

“He was flirting with you.”

Blake scoffs. “He wasn’t.”

“He was.” Yang angles for a kiss, and Blake dodges. Yang’s lips land at the corner of her mouth instead, and she groans in faux exasperation. “Can I blame him?”

Blake hums quietly, pleased at the attention, ears perking at the crown of her scalp, cheeks dimpling. Yang kisses into her smile, and this time Blake lets her, tilting onto tiptoe until their foreheads knock, teeth catching around Yang’s bottom lip. The chime of the elevator jars them apart, and Yang eyes the camera mounted in the corner. “I don’t want to give some pervert a show.”

Blake shakes her head, pressing the heel of her palm to her chest, a little breathless. “Let’s find our room then.” She looks at Yang hard, all half-lidded eyes, pink tongue wetting her lips. It’s enough to make Yang’s stomach tug, a delicious anticipatory swoop. “I’m tired of having an audience.”

**

Weiss finds Ruby in the courtyard. She’s tucked cross-legged in a small recess of stone, kudzu climbing the adjacent wall in dark, clinging tendrils. Her eyes are closed, and she’s almost motionless, only the gentle rise and fall of her chest giving her away. Weiss takes a moment to study her, the square set of her shoulders, her proud chin and hard, angled jaw. If Weiss didn’t know any better, she would almost mistake her for a statue set into the alcove of the quiet, abandoned courtyard.

She hesitates a moment longer, swallowing a nauseating cocktail of pride and longing, before crossing the courtyard toward her, letting her footfalls ring loudly on the cobblestone.

Ruby blinks open one eye, before fixing Weiss with a pout, brow scrunching. Weiss raises her hands in surrender. “I’m unarmed.” A pause. “I come in peace.” She thinks she sees Ruby smile, and counts it as a victory.

“I never should have let you watch  _Space Track_ ,” Ruby says, unfolding her legs and scooting close to the wall. She pats the ground at her side. “Come sit.”

Weiss grimaces at the hard stone but complies, folding herself into the space beside Ruby. It’s a tight fit, cramped, and their shoulder brush. She can smell the sweet-sharp of Ruby’s detergent, the lingering perfume of borrowed shampoo. She resists the urge to bury her face in Ruby’s neck, sating herself with an almost-accidental brush of their pinkies, hands lingering between them on the marbled ground.

“I’m sorry I snapped earlier,” she says. She focuses intently on the darkening sky, the apology unfamiliar in her mouth. “I’m just—” She debates for a second telling the truth, just giving in, and quickly swallows that desire, too. “I’m just tired.”

Ruby turns to face her, nose to nose. Weiss can count every single eyelash, can see the thin line of a scar at her temple, finds the dark freckle at the corner of her mouth. Ruby blinks wide, and on the ground between them, their fingers overlap. Weiss wonders how she could have ever mistaken someone so alive, so warm and tender and animate, for something stone.

“Did you mean it?” Ruby asks quietly. Weiss feels the heat of her breath against her lips, and she focuses on keeping her gaze level on Ruby’s eyes. “Did you mean what you said?”

Weiss plays dumb, pulling her hand away and curling it into her lap. “Mean what?”

“About not coming next time. About—” Ruby stutters here, and Weiss can hear quiver in her voice. Guilt rises in her throat, climbing high enough to choke. “—about leaving the team.”

Weiss says, “I don’t want to talk about this.” Ruby tenses in disappointment, and Weiss pretends not to notice.

“You never want to talk about anything.”

Weiss turns away from her, fixes her eyes back on the sliver of sky she can see through the high, pale walls of the courtyard. Rows of pastel townhouses cling to the horizon, threaded with narrow, shadowed alleyways and tresses of ivy. The moon is upended on its side, caught between the balustrades of two buildings. It tangles in the telephone wires, a trick of light and perspective. The cloud cover is thick and damp, a mosaic of dark, cracked earth, moonlight seeping between the fragments. Beside her Ruby shudders something close to a sob, and Weiss can’t stop looking at the fucking sky.

She thinks she might stay here long past twilight, might stay until the moon buries itself in this cavern of celestial soil, until she submerges in the kudzu, until it grows past the guilt in her throat, clings to her lungs and winds through her ribs like a trellis of bone and sinew. Weiss thinks she might stay until she drowns.

She’s frozen there by something innate and old and practiced. She was the statue all along.

Ruby gets up, and Weiss pretends she doesn’t see her wipe hard at her eyes with the back of hand. Ruby lingers at the mouth of the alcove, and Weiss knows she’s waiting for her to ask her to stay. Ruby rocks from foot to foot, tilts toward the wall and buries her hands in the kudzu. Closes her eyes. Waits.

“It’s beautiful,” Ruby says. She opens her eyes and looks at Weiss. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s a fucking parasite,” Weiss says.

This time when Ruby leaves, she doesn’t look back.

**

“Are the kids okay?”

Yang laughs against her throat, mouthing at the skin over her pulse point. “Let them figure it out, Blake.” She closes her lips over the steady hummingbird-thrum and sucks hard, drawing blood to the skin in a bruise of a kiss, littering the column of Blake’s neck with a sweet, red stain of strawberry bites. Blake’s protest shatters into a groan, and she tilts her head back to the mercy of Yang’s teeth. “Besides,” Yang says, punctuating the word with another kiss, lower this time, framing her collarbone, “Ruby isn’t a kid anymore.”

Blake palms the back of Yang’s head, urging her closer, eyes fixing on the moon, just visible from their perch on a deck chair of their room’s balcony. Storm clouds swallow it behind their bulk, and the night dims and wanes. “It’s not Ruby I’m worried about.”

Yang lifts Blake out of her lap, thighs bracketing her waist, and shifts her to the chair. She moves to stand in front of her, cradling Blake’s face carefully in her palms, thumbing at the petal-pink of her kiss-swollen lips. “Later, Blake.” She ducks to kiss her, parting Blake’s lips with her tongue, licking wetly into her mouth. Blake whines, writhing in the chair, grasping at Yang’s shirt until she stumbles a step closer, standing in a half-stoop between Blake’s legs. Yang pulls away, dazed and panting, and meets Blake’s eyes.

Blake tries to rise out of the chair to reach her, but Yang presses gently on her shoulders, urges her back into the seat. “I’ll take care of their drama later,” Yang says. She sinks to her knees and Blake gasps, ankles crossing behind Yang’s back. Yang hooks her fingers in Blake’s panties, peeling them down her legs slowly, spreading her knees carefully. She maneuvers the flimsy elastic and fabric gingerly, conscious of scoldings received in the past when she’s overeager, when she tears through them.

She licks her lips, nudges a kiss against Blake’s kneecap. It’s almost better this way—the wait, the anticipation. To make her hands move careful-gentle-slow while Blake gets impatient above her, the heel of her foot digging into Yang’s shoulder blades until she removes it to slip the fabric free.

Yang tucks the scrap of lace into her back pocket, smirks, guiding Blake’s legs back over her shoulders. She nuzzles into the satin-soft of Blake’s bare thighs, drags her lips to the apex of her, and kisses once, firm, until Blake keens. When she pulls away her face is slick from mouth to chin, and she grins. The clouds shift, and the moon lights behind her, all wash and surge and tide.

Yang thinks she could die from this, could die with this wanting.

“Later,” Yang says again. She ducks back in, fingers splayed wide on Blake’s thighs, fingertips bruising. “Let me take care of you now.”

Blake’s back arches, and her hands tangle in Yang’s hair, strands winding between her fingers, along her wrists, until everything is gold, and then—she tilts her head back, finds the moon—silver.

**

The sheets tangle around their legs, tenting over their waists, a paltry play at modesty. They face each other on the bed, breathing in a cycle, foreheads pressed close, brow to brow. Yang raises her arm between them, stroking at Blake’s cheek before trailing her hand to her neck, thumbing at the mottled bruises staining the line of her throat.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she says. She nuzzles forward to drop a kiss at the soft skin below Blake’s eyes, paper thin and petal-soft. She drags her fingers to a dark hickey at the swell of Blake’s breast, already purpling into a raw blossom of color. Yang frowns. “Ouchie.”

Blake hums quietly, curling her arm around Yang’s bare back, climbing planes of hard muscle and the taut ripple of flesh and bone. She finds raised welts at the blade of Yang’s shoulders, four harsh red lines curving down her back in an ecstatic comet. “I got you, too.”

Yang grins, feline sharp, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the warm skin below Blake’s human ears. “I love it when you mark me up.”

Blake blushes, ducking her head and burying her face in Yang’s throat, grumbling a low protest. “I don’t like hurting you.”

“It’s a good hurt, I promise.” She palms at Blake’s chest, circling her nipple, before dropping her hand lower, stroking soft at the hard, ridged muscle of Blake’s stomach. She cuts her eyes to Blake, still tucked against her chest, throat rumbling in a low purr, and her face turns calculated and sharp. She slips her hand between Blake’s legs, finds her swollen and wet against her palm.

Blake’s purr turns to a growl, and she jars away from Yang’s chest, pupils blown wide. Her hand scrambles weakly at Yang’s wrist. “Oh God,” she whimpers. “I can’t again.”

Yang hums, ducking closer, breathing hot against Blake’s mouth. “Just one more.” She curls her fingers in a careful touch, tracing the pad of her index finger around Blake’s clit. “You’re soaked, baby.” She’s velvet-soft and hot, and Yang dips her hand lower, finding liquid-heat and coaxing a whimper from Blake’s kiss-swollen lips. She looks dangerously flushed, her body liquid-supple and pliant, arching into the mattress. Heat unspools molten between Yang’s legs, and she clenches her own thighs tight, watching Blake’s mouth fall open, eyes rolling back. “Do you want me to stop?”

Blake stutters her hips against Yang’s fingers, rouged points of heat burning stark against her cheeks, a mottled blush creeping down her chest. Her hair is matted to her forehead with sweat, tangled at the nape of her neck, and the pale line of her throat strains and pulses. Her hand tightens at Yang’s wrist, aligns until her hand overlaps with Yang’s, their tangled fingers slick with her own wet. She guides Yang’s fingers to her entrance, presses until she curls two inside. She whines, canting her hips.

Yang stills, pulling back to meet Blake’s eyes. “Do you want me to stop?” she asks again.

Blake shakes her head, frantic. “No God, just—” her eyes flutter shut and she pants. “—gentle.”

Yang smiles. “I can do that.” She kisses into Blake’s open mouth, laps wet against the heat of her and finds the taste of herself on Blake’s tongue, musky and copper-sharp.

Blake keens, mouth slack, too tired to kiss back in earnest, fingers still locked around Yang’s wrist. She tugs until Yang returns to her clit, and it only takes a few sloppy strokes of her fingers before Blake shatters, body tensing into a hard line. She manages the single syllable of Yang’s name, a reverence, before she curls back into herself, stomach muscles flexing, shaking with aftershocks, thighs clamping shut around Yang’s fingers.

“Holy shit,” Yang says. She strokes again, playful, and Blake bats her away, groaning a laugh.

“That’s my line,” she says, rolling onto her back, eyes finding the ceiling, breathing hard. “You are relentless.”

Yang curls around her side, drops a kiss on her shoulder. “I just really like fucking you, I guess.”

“Ever the romantic.”

Yang wipes her wet fingers on the sheets and Blake grimaces. “Hey,” Yang says. “Is this the part where I tell you I love you?” She wiggles closer, a little sheepish. “Because I love you.”

Blake turns again to face her, tugging the sheets up over their heads until it’s just the two of them in the close, dark heat. She smooths her fingers through Yang’s mess of blonde curls, kisses at her cheeks, creating a maze of constellations with her mouth and the dusting of freckles across the bridge of Yang’s nose. She sighs her answer against Yang’s lips, against the pads of her fingers—licking them clean—against her throat and chest and later, when they catch their breath, against the inside of her thighs.

Beyond the room—the bed, the balcony—the storm finally hits Vacuo. A wall of murky, nebulous clouds roll in from the desert, and the rain falls in sheets, staining the pale, stone city dark with rainwater and mud. The sky growls and roils, an inky-black stain spilling from the horizon, backlit by eerie, electric green. The canal churns and lurches, overfilling the locks and drowning the banks in water and the thick, static smell of ozone.

But inside it’s just the two of them, in their makeshift tent of sheets, the air thick with sex, bed damp with bathwater and sweat. Yang tangles her hands in Blake’s hair, arching against Blake’s mouth, sighing expletives and _I love you’s_ with every lap of her tongue.

The rain thunders through the city like some growling, animal thing, and outside in a cobblestone courtyard Weiss shivers, soaked through to the bone. But here, inside, Blake turns her head to kiss a damp mark into the curve of Yang’s thigh, and the whisper of her mouth against Yang’s skin sounds like _later, later, later_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternately titled: when in doubt, eat ur girlfriend out
> 
> also sorry for making our girls sad. yell at me at nevervalentines.tumblr.com


	3. The Bathtub

There’s a trail of clothes leading from the entryway of their hotel room to the bathroom. The door is cracked, warm light bleeding around the frame, steam curling in wisped, humid tendrils through the gap. The room smells like sickly-sweet lavender and tart red wine, and the pooled water on the thick, cream-colored rug makes Ruby wince.

She follows the scattered remnant of Weiss’s outfit, from the heavy, cotton sweatshirt, dark fabric soaked through, to discarded spanx, a balled t-shirt left somewhere near the foot of the bed. She spots Weiss’s bra, dropped outside the bathroom door, and averts her eyes, face burning.

The whole thing screams “stress-bath,” and Ruby would roll her eyes if it wasn’t so pointedly _Weiss_.

She hesitates by the door. The smell is thicker here, almost stifling, and she wrinkles her nose as the distinct scent of melting wax and wick joins. She presses her fist against the wooden pane of the door, knocking carefully.

“Weiss?” she calls softly. She hesitates, tilting her forehead against the door, the cool frame a welcome respite in the overheated room. “Can I come in?”

There’s silence for a few beats, almost as thick as the heavily-perfumed air, and Ruby feels her stomach clench and turn, sick with this half-way-fight they’re having, sick with this limbo and this push-pull and the synthetic, cloying smell of lavender.

She hears a slosh of water before Weiss replies. “Fine.”

Ruby exhales, pressing gently at the door. When it opens she catches a glimpse of the tiled floor, the high porcelain counter and steam-slick mirror, before finding Weiss—half submerged in the large, marbled tub—shoulders bare and wet, hair dripping long and pale down her back. Ruby yelps, feels her face flush and burn, and averts her eyes somewhere near the ceiling, fixing her eyes so determinedly on a light fixture she thinks she might go blind.

“I am—I am so sorry.” She squeezes her eyes shut, clenching her fists until her knuckles white and strain. “I didn’t realize—”

She can hear Weiss shift, the water lapping at the lip of the tub. “I said its fine, Ruby.” There is a sigh, long suffering and annoyed. “It’s not like you can see anything.”

Besides the sconce, half-dimmed and pulsing with a low, yellow glow, the only light comes from the scattering of candles around the room, and the dull-ember burn of two sticks of incense—apparently responsible for the sickening smell of faux-flowers and the twin streams of fragrant smoke.

Though it’s dim, it _is_ enough to see by. Enough to see flickering shadows play on the high, ornate ceiling, enough to see Weiss submerged in the large, marbled tub, slunk low enough that only the curvature of her shoulders surfaces above the water, the swell of her cleavage disappearing beneath the water. Her knees hump above the surface, but the water between them is opaque with bubbles and a generous helping of colored bath-salts.

Ruby lowers her gaze, meeting Weiss’s eyes tentatively, finding them puffy, rubbed raw. Ruby steps closer and sits, balancing herself on the edge of the bath next to an open bottle of dark, purple wine and a half-full glass, a kiss of lipstick sealing the rim. Ruby finds the stain of it on Weiss’s lips, a purple rouge that smears messily at her bottom lip. Her face is drawn, cheeks hollowed, and her bangs slick at her brow, tendrils of wet hair clinging to her cheeks and neck. Her scar stands out stark against her skin, and her cheeks are flush with the water’s heat, a blush bleeding down her chest, her shoulders.

Her usual reflective, gilded veneer is cracked and fractured, and it makes Ruby itch to see her like this, not the haggard-worn of the battlefield, but something more deeply intimate. Something painful. Weiss sloshes a handful of water in her direction, the ebb of the water slinking dangerously low at her chest. Ruby looks away quickly, dipping a hand in the water and letting the silky heat of it lick up her wrist.

She can feel Weiss watching her and the attention burns hotter than the bathwater, wetting her cheeks with cloying steam and a thin sheen of sweat. “Are you drunk?” Ruby asks the question carefully, eyes still down, non-confrontational.

Weiss never drinks, not since—

“No.” Weiss’s voice is rough. She slinks lower in the bath, her legs coming out of the water as she does, calves shiny with soap suds, her warm skin narrowly missing Ruby’s submerged hand. “I tried, but I can’t since—”

“Since your mom. I know.”

Weiss looks up at Ruby, eyes wide. “I really wanted to, y’know.” She presses hard at her forehead with the flat of her palm. “But the smell, the taste,” she hesitates here, wrinkling her nose. “It makes me sick.”

She looks strikingly small in the cavernous tub, her eyes shiny and red-rimmed, wine staining her mouth like a child’s play at lipstick. Her makeup has rubbed clean from her face, a bruise of bleeding mascara smudging the skin below her eyes. Ruby reaches without thinking, leaning across the water. She rubs at Weiss’s lower lip with her thumb before she can remind herself not to, blurring the whorls of her fingerprint with sweet, plum merlot.

Weiss gasps a little at the touch, her lips opening against Ruby’s finger, the breath of her exhale scalding. Ruby has to swallow the urge to press the tip of her finger into the pink, wet of Weiss’s mouth, she craves it so keenly it startles her, a sharp pang between her legs. She sees a flash of tongue, a hint of white teeth, and the ache of it drops low in her stomach, beating in time to the tinted water’s ebb and flow.

She moves her hand, cupping at Weiss’s cheek instead, rubbing away the dark, smear of makeup below her eyes. “Why the candles?”

Weiss startles back to awareness, remembering thirty seconds too late to jerk away from Ruby’s hand, remembers they are fighting. She mumbles an answer under her breath, and Ruby strains to hear.

“What?”

Weiss shrinks away from her, tilting her head back until her hair soaks to her scalp. “I was trying to get rid of the smell.”

Ruby frowns and Weiss sinks lower, ducking her chin below the water. “Your semblance. The roses. The room smelled like them.”

“Oh,” Ruby’s eyes flare wide, and she feels her palms prickle, electric. “I didn’t know that was a problem.”

When Weiss meets her gaze, her eyes are narrowed, brow tilting dangerously low. “I just didn’t want to think about you for five fucking seconds, is _that_ a problem?”

Ruby reels back from her words, the venom slipping unbidden into her system, flooding her veins, and Ruby moves to leave, feeling tears burn behind her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come.” She pushes away from the tub, half-tripping on her way toward the door.

“Shit.” She can hear Weiss move behind her, and then a wet hand on her wrist, fingers circling tight enough to bruise. “Don’t go.”

Ruby doesn’t turn, just freezes stock still, eyes on the door. Water beads on her skin, drips to the floor.

Again, softer. “Don’t go.”

Ruby half turns and—for the first time—doesn’t look away. Weiss is half-kneeling to reach her, chest fully bared, and Ruby’s eyes catch on the creamy weight of her breasts, her pink nipples, the solid muscle of her stomach, and the V of her hips.

“Weiss,” Ruby says. She carves her gaze back to Weiss’s face, finds her eyes wide and panicked. “I’m here. I just—” She closes her eyes, and breathes deep, trying to calm. The pale stretch of Weiss’s skin, the hollow of her throat, is all too much to handle right now. Ruby is charged with a sickening mixture of arousal and anger, pulling her away from center. “I just need you to tell me you aren’t leaving, either.”

Weiss lets go and sinks back into the water. She cups her face in her hands, regards Ruby blearily. When she speaks her words are muffled against her palm and Ruby sighs, stepping closer, tilts her head. “What?”

Weiss repeats herself, louder this time, and her voice cracks halfway through. “I just don’t know why I’m here, sometimes.” She blinks slow, lower lip trembling. Her eyes bead and well, and Ruby watches a single tear drip down in her cheek in slow motion, transfixed by the crystal-salt trail. “I don’t know why you want me to stay.”

Ruby feels her heart shatter, thinks only Weiss could do this much damage without even raising her hands, without even raising her voice.

“Weiss, please.” Ruby hates how she’s already begging, hates that she doesn’t know what she’s begging for. “God, Weiss, look at me.”

Weiss’s eyes stay fixed on her hands. A tear drips to the tip of her nose before falling to the water.

Ruby rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “I can’t believe you’re going to make me do this.”

Weiss doesn’t look up until Ruby’s already got one foot over the side of the tub. She steps into the warm water, clothes and all, grimacing as it soaks through her tights, wets her to the skin. She sinks into the bath fully, and the displaced water lurches over the lip of the tub, soaking the floor in pink, sweet-smelling bathwater. Ruby can’t help but laugh, the sound staccato and abrupt, as her shirt balloons around her, inflating with water and pockets of air. The wet fabric clings to her collarbones, and she wriggles, separating the hem of her shirt from her stomach with a squelch. She settles against the back of the tub, facing Weiss, their legs bumping and tangling under the water.

Ruby meets Weiss’s eyes, laughing again at her slack mouth, her face aghast, a beautifully-comic expression of horror that only Weiss can manage at any sleight of social convention.

“Ruby,” Weiss gasps. “What are you doing?”

Ruby slaps a handful of water in Weiss’s direction. It catches her in the face and she sputters.

“You left me no choice,” Ruby says. She raises her dripping arms out of the water, wrings it out of her sleeves. “We’re truly in it together, now.”

Weiss watches her for a beat, casts a long, disbelieving look around the cavernous bathroom like she is trying to confirm that yes, she is naked in a tub with her teammate and a room full of candles and incense and strawberry scented water. Then, so suddenly that Ruby startles, she laughs, too, high and pealing. It’s the best kind of Weiss-laugh, the kind that’s chest-deep and clear, that wrinkles the corner of her eyes and pulls high in her cheeks.

Ruby grins, goofy and wide. “What?”

Weiss shakes her head, wiping away tears with the heel of her palm. “I’m crying.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m naked.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re in the bath with me.”

Ruby looks around as if to confirm. “Yup.”

Weiss sniffs hard, sinking deeper into the water until it wets the long, pale line of her throat. She swallows and Ruby follows the motion, her skin shining. Weiss says, “We really have to stop taking these long contracts.”

Ruby shrugs. “But I miss you guys when we’re not together.” She frowns. “Another reason you should stay.”

Weiss sobers. “You don’t get it.”

Ruby feels a tug of nausea in the pit of her stomach, watching Weiss’s lips submerge in the warm water, a water droplet catching in the furrow of her upper lip. “Is it the Atlas girl?”

Weiss slicks her hair back with one hand, frowning. “Atlas girl?”

Ruby feels clumsy for having brought it up, like her foot is reaching for the last non-existent stair, too far gone to keep her balance. She forges ahead anyway, wincing as she spits out the words. “The girl you were seeing in Atlas—are you leaving us for her?”

Weiss straightens incredulously, forgetting herself, her chest surfacing from the tub, water slicking down her chin. “That’s what you’re worried about?”

Ruby shrugs, her shoulders weighed down by the weight of water and cloth.

Weiss’s brow furrows, mouth on a devastating tilt. “She—I’m—we aren’t even seeing each other anymore.” She looks at Ruby directly, face hardening a few prickling degrees. “And why would it matter if we were?” She shifts closer then, and the ripples that spread to Ruby’s side might as well be a tsunami. They’re close enough now that Ruby can feel the heat of her through the quickly cooling bathwater, can find the pale freckles that cling to the haughty arch of her nose. “Are you jealous?”

Ruby can feel her cheeks flush and burn, and the truth rises in her throat unbidden. Weiss’s leg is fitted in between Ruby’s raised thighs, knees bumping. Ruby finds herself fixating on the notches in her slim, slanted shoulders, the hard line of her collarbone. They meet eyes quickly, this brief glancing thing, and Ruby can’t read her past the spun-blue-gold of her iris.

For a moment she almost confesses, splinter-quick and painless, but then she remembers Weiss’s accusation from before: “a parasite”—something that clung too fast, too hard, and choked the life from everything it touched.

“You’re my best friend,” Ruby manages finally. She swallows and swallows, venom settling at the pit of her stomach. “We’re part of a team, of course I worry about losing you.”

Weiss looks at her steadily, her eyes pink and red-rimmed. When she speaks the words are practiced, rehearsed.

“You don’t understand what it’s like. Yang is strong and kind, and Blake is righteous and good and you—” She closes her eyes, exhales shakily. “You’re a goddamn hero, Ruby.” Her voice breaks and snaps. “So what am I?”

Ruby gasps out a laugh, scrambling to close the distance, catching Weiss’s face between her palms and pulling her close. She ignores the tangle of their limbs beneath the water and leans forward until their foreheads knock.

“You’re Weiss Schnee,” Ruby says, and she laughs into the space between them, this heady, helpless kind of contradiction. “You’re my partner.”

Weiss doesn’t react beyond closing her eyes and tipping closer, like she’s waiting to hear more. Ruby can feel the flutter of her eyelashes against her own cheeks.

“You’re stubborn and bratty, and way too fucking smart for your own good.” Ruby grins, feels the suggestion of Weiss’s mouth against her lips, as unsubstantial as an almost. “But you’re also the bravest person I’ve ever met. We both know I wouldn’t be alive without you.” She corrects then, losing courage. “None of us would be.”

She leans back far enough to see Weiss’s face and coaxes her eyes open with a gentle tap on her nose. “I have seen you at your worst, Weiss Schnee.”

They both laugh then, thinking about Beacon and dust-filled luggage, the explosive encounter of their first meeting, and Ruby feels herself surge and crackle with the electricity of Weiss’s smile. She grasps her chin between her forefingers, tilts her face up until Weiss meets her eyes in earnest.

“And I’ve seen you at your best, too.” She leans in far enough to press a kiss to the dimple of Weiss’s cheek, lingering a beat too long. “You are amazing.”

For the first time she remembers herself, chances a glance down before ratcheting her head back toward the ceiling, cheeks singeing red—“and you are also very, very naked.”

Weiss solidifies, the proud tilt returning to her chin. “Grow up, Ruby,” she says, scolding. “You’ve seen me naked a thousand times, it’s just a body.”

“I don’t know about a thousand,” Ruby mutters. Now that her heartfelt speech is over, she is suddenly painfully aware of every molecule in her body. Her aura strains and weeps for Weiss’s water-beaded skin, for the hard sheen of her eyes and the lazy fall of her hair. Their proximity is starting to make her thrum and pulse, and Ruby focuses all of her attention on a seashell shaped wall sconce. “Yeah, no biggy.” Play it cool, play it cool. “It’s just a body.”

“Friends do this sort of thing all the time,” Weiss says. But even she is looking a little breathless now, a little more conscious of the dim, flickering lighting and their perilous proximity. Her eyes flick to Ruby’s face and then down, pale skin flushing. “But we should probably dry off.”

Weiss clears her throat noisily and makes to scooch back at the same time to Ruby moves to stand, there is a brief scuffle and confusion of limbs before Ruby teeters forward. She throws out her arms, catching herself on the first thing that her hands find.

Which, in this case, happens to be Weiss’s chest.

Time slows to a standstill, and Ruby stares at her hands agape. For some absolute, unexplainable reason, she doesn’t pull away: just leaves them there, fingers flexing, cupped around the swell of Weiss’s breasts.

Weiss looks equally aghast, mouth falling open, tongue flashing pink against her bottom lip. One second stretches to five, and Ruby swallows, strained. She knows she should pull away, she knows and knows and knows, but Weiss’s skin feels sinfully soft, satin against her fingertips, and Ruby can feel her nipples harden against her palms.

Her eyes flicker up, waiting for Weiss to push her away, but she isn’t moving, just staring at Ruby’s fingers. Her ears are tipped red, elfish and flushed, and Ruby watches the wet of her tongue undulate against the inside of her teeth.

“Do friends do this, too?” Ruby asks finally, tipping her chin to meet Weiss head on. She moves her thumbs in a careful stroke, a mirrored movement, Weiss’s skin pimpling in the wake of her fingers.

Weiss’s eyes look wide and deer-caught, nostrils flaring. “I don’t—”

Ruby feels the weight of her, feels the achy response between her legs. “These are—these are different from mine.”

Weiss shifts her shoulders, shrugs into her, muscles popping under her skin. “I guess—” she pauses to shiver as Ruby moves her thumbs in another stroke, harder this time—“I guess they’re smaller than yours.”

Ruby hums—she’s fixated on her own hands now, the slope of Weiss’s skin disappearing beneath them, calloused fingers splayed wide. She applies more pressure, and Weiss grunts, tension releasing at the back of her throat, and shifts below the water. Ruby is keenly aware of the lick of water against the lip of the tub, her instincts as fine-tuned as though their situation is critical battle play—but the chess pieces are the lap of pink suds, the pebble of Weiss’s nipples against her palms, the ache between her thighs, and the way Weiss is looking at her.

Her expression is as raw as an open wound, and her mouth falls wider as Ruby squeezes again, shifting closer until their foreheads knock and bob, their hair a dewy, wet tangle.

“You’re—you’re sensitive,” Ruby says, finally. That they’ve crossed a line is overtly clear. Weiss is shaking and digging her teeth into her bottom lip and the water is sloshing and hot and opaque. Ruby leans down as if to take her skin into her mouth, or take Weiss into her mouth, or dip her chin below the water to the slick, wet between her legs and—

“You need to leave,” Weiss grits out, before she ducks away from Ruby’s hands. She stands and grabs for a towel, covers herself like this is Eden, and she is suddenly and keenly aware of sin. “Please, get out.”

Ruby looks at her, horrified, scrambling out of the tub with a grip so tight she breaks the porcelain, a cobweb of cracks splintering from the epicenter of her palm. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says as she backs out of the bathroom, hitting the doorjamb hard with her hip. Her clothes soak the floor, water pooling off of her shirt, the ends of her hair. “I just—”

She jars the bottle of wine from the counter and it shatters, glass and sweet merlot bleeding into the bathwater on the tile. It slinks soupy red into the grout, a bloody, permanent stain.

She disappears in a fall of petals without meeting Weiss’s eyes, and Weiss hears the door open and shut in quick succession. Weiss sinks to the ground as soon as the wood slams back into the frame. She is achy and wet, the sharp protrusions of her spine grinding into the cream marbling.

She inhales once and spits a final sob at the irony. The room smells like roses.

**

By the time she knocks on the door, it’s 3 a.m. She hammers hard with the heel of her palm, calls through the wood, “Please. It’s me.”

For a moment, there’s just the sound of storm, a rolling crescendo against the waves of clay-red terracotta, the hard fall of rain. Then—a scuffle, a muffled curse, and finally the slide of the deadbolt. Yang opens the door still yawning.

She peers at Weiss blearily, all six feet of her propped languidly against the doorframe. Her hair is a messy blonde mane, and she stretches her arms over her head until her muscles pop and ripple. The move leaves Weiss face to face with her chest, only covered by a taught elastic sports bra, baggy cotton boxers slung low on her hips, and Weiss averts her eyes quickly, crossing her arms over her own chest.

Yang grins at her response, cheeks dimpling. “Can I help you, sweetheart?”

Weiss can see the room in slivers around her shoulders—balcony doors thrown wide, the linen curtains blowing inward, rain slicking the hardwood floors. The bed is a mess of sheets, blankets kicked to the floor, and the painting over the headboard is knocked ajar. Blake is pulling on a shirt at the foot of the bed, her back to the doorway, arms outstretched above the sharp roll of her shoulder blades, all satin-steel and lithe. Weiss blushes despite herself and tries to hide the flush behind the fall of her hair.

“Can I sleep with you?” she asks, more a murmur than anything, and reddens further as Yang’s smile grows.

“I’m flattered Weiss, but I have a girlfriend.”

Two arms encircle Yang’s waist as Blake steps up behind her, arching onto tip-toe and hooking her chin over Yang’s shoulder. She regards Weiss smugly, looking bed-rumpled and satisfied, ears flicking, her lips milk-pleased and quirked.

“I don’t know, baby,” she says, pausing to slink around Yang, wrapping long, cool fingers around Weiss’s wrist. “She’s kinda cute, maybe we should keep her.”

Weiss pulls away quickly, and makes to leave, already pouting. “You guys are the worst.”

Yang catches her up in a single long stride, grabs her about the waist and heaves her over her shoulder. “You know we’re just messing, Weiss.”

Weiss knows better than to struggle, just rests her forehead on Yang’s back, lets her legs dangle.

Yang hauls her into the room while Blake pads behind. Her hair is a mess of curls, and the over-large shirt she is sporting is undoubtedly Yang’s. The room smells like storm and sex, and Weiss would be disgusted if she wasn’t so fucking tired.

Yang deposits her at the foot of the bed before immediately curling back into the sheets, burying her face in the pillows. When she speaks, her voice is muffled. “Now tell us what you want so I can sleep.”

Blake perches on the side of the bed, one hand finding Yang’s calf to gift her with a single sympathetic pet. “What’s wrong, Weiss?”

Weiss opens her mouth with all the intention of making up some excuse, but she finds she can’t speak from behind the lump in her throat, and her eyes burn and well before she can stop them.

Blake’s face crumples in sympathy, and she surges forward, coaxing Weiss onto the bed between them. Weiss shudders out one long, pathetic sob, and Yang surfaces to curl up behind her, buries her face in Weiss’s hair, still damp from the tub.

Her arm snakes around Weiss’s waist and she lets herself be pulled against Yang’s muscled, bulky warmth, enveloped in the fruity smell of her citrus shampoo and the security of her bare skin.

“What’s wrong?” Blake says again, and Weiss focuses on the fine, blonde hair on Yang’s arms instead of meeting Blake’s eyes.

“I just don’t want to share a room with Ruby right now.”

Blake approaches her next question carefully, like she’s worried Weiss will spook. “Did something happen?”

There’s a beat of silence then, the storm rushing to fill it, a growl of thunder like the roll low of consonants, the steady breath of rain. Weiss blinks heavy, her limbs turned syrup-slow and loose. She exhales.

“She got in the bath tub with me.”

Behind her, she feels Yang stiffen.

Blake says, “oh.”

Weiss laughs, a little hysterical.

Blake looks nervous to continue. “In, like, a friend way?”

Yang makes a disgruntled noise and rolls away from Weiss’s back, covering her ears. When she talks, her voice is overloud, words muffled by her own hands. “I’ll rejoin the conversation when we aren’t talking about my baby sister getting into bathtubs with other people.”

She buries her face back in the sheets, humming tunelessly. Blake regards her with some amusement before turning her attention back to Weiss.

“Did anything else happen?”

“I mean—” Weiss starts to regret the words before they even make it out of her mouth. “She may have grabbed my boobs.”

Blake covers what sounds suspiciously like a laugh with a mangled cough, rubs her fingers hard over the beginning of her smile. “There’s nothing platonic about holding a boob.”

“Oh, fuck off.” Weiss wants to be annoyed, but the bed is enveloping her in its soft cloud cocoon, and Blake’s eyes are squinting in that way that means she desperately wants to smile, and behind them Yang is still humming an incredibly off-tune rendition of an old Patch nursery rhyme.

Blake leans over Weiss, squashing her further into the bed under her weight, and gets Yang’s attention with a pinch at her forearm. “Hey baby, is holding a boob platonic?”

Yang looks a little green, eyeing the balcony like she isn’t sure if she should make a run for it. “Please never tell me why you’re asking me this.”

Blake smothers her laugh against Yang’s shoulder and Weiss hears the smack of a kiss before Blake rolls back to Weiss’s other side. Yang curls back behind, one hand stretched over Weiss’s hip just far enough to tangle her fingers loosely in the fabric of Blake’s shirt.

Blake rearranges her face into something more serious, golden eyes narrowed, the perfect bow of her lips creasing into a frown. “You can stay with us tonight, Weiss.” She ducks in, deposits a kiss on Weiss’s brow. “Everything will look clearer in the morning.”

Yang yawns against the nape of Weiss’s neck, and nods her assent. She throws a bulky, muscled thigh over Weiss’s waist and Weiss grumbles in protest, swatting at her arm.

“You are such an oaf,” she says. Then yawns, too, snuggling back into the sling of Yang’s hips in resignation. “But thank you.”

“’Night Weiss,” Yang murmurs. Weiss hums a noise in response, watching Blake click off the bedside light, plunging the room into cool, shadow-shrouded dark before curling into her front.

Weiss lies sandwiched between them, caught on the precipice of sleep. Reality is a sharp, impossible plunge away. Yang’s breathing slows and deepens, but Blake is still awake. Weiss can see light from the open windows reflecting off of her eyes, a nocturnal feline glow.

“Blake,” Weiss whispers, just quiet enough that it doesn’t feel real, that they could almost be dreaming. “I think I really hurt her.”

Blake snuggles closer, seeking warmth, and tucks her cheek against the top of Weiss’s head. When she speaks Weiss can feel the grind of her jaw muscles against her scalp, the low murmur of her words buzzing into her skin.

“I love you, Weiss,” Blake says, her words sleep-heavy and slow. “But you are so stupid.”

Weiss blinks again, struggling to keep her eyes open. She doesn’t have the energy to be offended. The room feels gauzy and half-realized, like Blake’s words are coming at some incredible distance. She can feel both of her teammates’ heartbeats; Yang’s steady staccato drum beat, Blake’s faster warm-blooded thrum.

The room appears in pillowy fragments: a scrape of wall illuminated in moonlight; watery reflections weeping down a cracked window pane; a sliver of Vacuan sky, bone deep and endless.

There’s a steady metronome beneath it all and she realizes it’s Ruby, her heart keeping time with Weiss’s pulse through thin, stucco walls. Weiss imagines she can see her, lying alone in her empty double bed a hotel room apart.

Despite the distance, Weiss can feel her aching.

Over Vacuo, the storm breaks—the rain trembles to a tenuous stop, and the earth sighs and drinks deep, certain that this will be the last rainfall for some time. The pre-twilight world settles and quiets. Weiss closes her eyes, slips into sleep, and a wall away Ruby follows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in this house we love platonic boob grabs. find me on tumblr @ nevervalentines


	4. The Brunch

Weiss sneaks back into her own hotel room the next morning, having extricated herself from the tangle of limbs and blankets in Blake and Yang’s bed. She’d woken tucked under Blake’s chin, Yang’s arms wrapped securely around her waist, drowning in a mess of blonde and black hair.

The feeling is oddly akin to the few walk-of-shames she’s ever participated in. If the guilt is tied to her or Ruby it’s hard to say.

At first glance, the hotel room appears empty, and the tightness in her chest eases in relief. The balcony door is propped ajar with a suitcase, a relentless blue sky visible between the blocky, precariously stacked horizon. The city rises a few staggered steps before descending back into desert. One bed is unused and crisply made, the other rumpled and sleep-mussed. Weiss rolls her eyes. Of course Ruby wouldn’t make her bed. She’s a notoriously fidgety sleeper, and several pillows lie kicked off to the side, Crescent Rose tucked up under the blankets.

Weiss suppresses another eye roll and stoops to fetch one of the discarded pillows, plumping it between her hands before returning it to the headboard.

“I was going to do that, you know.”

Weiss jumps at the sudden sound of Ruby’s voice and turns to meet it, gasping a little before she can stop herself. Ruby is standing in the balcony doorway, palming at the back of her neck with one hand.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Weiss says nothing, her heart in her throat. Ruby crosses the threshold slowly, pink-cheeked and struck-shy. She’s back in a skirt, some mid-thigh scrap of fabric, and her shirt isn’t much better—cropped well above her navel, flesh-tight black cotton, a low scooped neck. Across her back is a thick leather strap with a magnetic clasp at the hollow between her shoulders, neat rows of ammunition fixed to the belt. The way the high-capped sleeves cling to her biceps is obscene, potentially illegal if Weiss were to refer to Vacuo’s strict open carry laws.

Her feet are bare, which makes it all worse somehow, an easy play at intimacy. Like Weiss could be coming home to this. Like Weiss deserves her here, sun-flushed and barefoot and waiting in the doorway.

It’s an awkward reprise of the night before, a forced hesitancy that rarely existed between them until now. They’ve always fought, but not like this, not so layered with subtext that Weiss can’t remember where one fight begins and another ends.

“Where were you last night?” Ruby doesn’t sound accusing, just hollow, craning her neck to avoid Weiss’s eyes, focusing instead on the untouched bed.

When Weiss answers her words bite sharp, but it’s too late to swallow them back. “Why does it matter to you?”

Ruby scrubs one hand hard over her face. “You know I hate sleeping alone.”

Weiss feels suddenly chagrined, and fumbles a step forward. “I know you do.”

She doesn’t apologize, but Ruby tilts her chin to meet her eyes, smiles, and Weiss knows it’s absolution. She curls her palms tight, nails biting into flesh. She doesn’t deserve it.

“I just—” she closes her eyes tight, exhales past the truth. “I crashed with Blake and Yang.”

Ruby grimaces, crosses the room to perch on the edge of her bed. “I hope they put on some clothes.”

Weiss laughs, breathy and unfit for this forgiveness. “Hardly.”

“Listen,” Ruby says. She rubs her palms over her cheeks again, eyes fixed on the door, on the ground, on anywhere but Weiss. “I’m sorry about last night.”

Weiss stands, frozen.

“I shouldn’t have touched you,” Ruby swallows hard. “It was an accident, and I’m sorry.” She shrugs, reaches for the room key and Crescent Rose, untangling her from the sheets. “We should meet the others, I think Yang messaged something about getting brunch.”

Weiss watches Ruby move toward the doorway. She is statue-still, struck by the same panicked immobility of last night. Her chest is tight and cold, and she feels numb down to her fingertips.

Ruby doesn’t look back, just pauses in the corridor to fit Crescent Rose into place at her back, the weapon clipping into the magnetic strip with a smooth metallic snap. She stoops to slip her bare feet into clunky combat boots, bending easily despite 35 plus pounds of machinery strapped to her back.

Her hair is up in a ponytail, and Weiss loves it like this. Loves that she can see Ruby’s neck, can see her face, her eyes, bangs swept messy to the side. She watches her stand, watches her fingers curl around the doorknob.

She pictures what it will look like if Ruby leaves her here in this room, what will happen if she lets her walk away.

“Wait.”

Ruby pauses, half turns. She looks tired.

Weiss decides to try honesty. Just this once. Just for now. She’ll start small, she’ll start—“I like it when you touch me.”

Ruby does a full turn now, face lined in a quiet, wide-eyed shock. Her ponytail brushes the nape of her neck and she swipes at it absently with the back of her hand. “You what?”

“I said, I like it. When you touch me, I like it.”

Ruby stares for a second longer before she starts to smile. Her cheeks dimple and stretch, and her teeth sharpen as she grins. She tilts her head in kittenish curiosity and takes a step toward Weiss, extends her hand, curls it at her wrist.

“Yeah?” She tightens her grasp, fingers climbing the pale line of Weiss’s arm. “Like this?”

Weiss shakes her head, speechless.

Ruby moves it to her neck, fits it at the hinge of her collarbone and presses her thumb into Weiss’s pulse. “This?”

Weiss shakes her head again. Her breath is stuttering out louder now, and she is sure Ruby can hear it. Ruby moves closer, fits her open mouth against Weiss’s neck and presses her teeth against her skin. “How about that?” Her lips brush the line of her throat, and Weiss shivers, starts to thaw.

“Did you just bite me?”

Ruby smiles into her neck, mimics her tone from earlier. “Hardly.”

Weiss stifles a laugh. “Don’t touch me,” she says, but reaches out a hand, fitting it at the notch of Ruby’s hipbones. Ruby’s body, her physicality, is a well-tread map. Despite the distance that shoulders between them, Weiss knows every part of her better than the color of her own mother’s eyes.

Ruby raises her head and her face turns serious, her eyes a flinty, stormy grey. She moves in, and for a second Weiss thinks Ruby is about to kiss her.

But then she’s hugging her instead, wrapping her arms full around Weiss’s waist, dropping her forehead onto Weiss’s shoulder. Weiss responds automatically, arms around her neck, burying her face against her temple. She smells clean and sharp, a contrast to the sticky, desert musk of the last few weeks. She can feel the hard metal of Crescent Rose under her fingertips, Ruby’s hands dimpling the skin at her back, her breathe damp and warm against her shoulder.

Something about it—the smell of Ruby’s shampoo, or the barren dorm-like hotel room, or the smallness of Ruby like this, her head tucked under Weiss’s chin—feels like Beacon again. Before mud churned battlefields, the half-truth of fairytales, and the white-hot burn of a spear piercing through her gut.

She is suddenly deeply and perilously envious of herself six years ago. She misses the academy with a deep, nostalgic lurch, so keen it makes the pale knot of scar-tissue on her stomach twinge. She aches for Ruby then—brave and small and new, before she was forced to lead an army in someone else’s war.

For a moment they are back in the Beacon library, tucked away in the stacks, while Ruby comforts her after another call from her father, before their arguments had more weight and heft than Crescent Rose.

She thinks of Ruby then, shorter and dewy-eyed, drowning in the folds of her cloak, offering Weiss the hem to wipe her tear-stained cheeks.

She turns her face into Ruby’s hair, sniffles, wriggling until Ruby clutches her tighter.

“I miss you,” she says, words softened by Ruby’s skin.

Ruby laughs, a little wet and scratchy. “I’m right here.”

Weiss grumbles a small noise, nuzzles deeper into Ruby’s hair. Ruby pets her hands over Weiss’s hips, further mussing the rumpled silk of her pajama shorts. “Tell me what I can do.”

Weiss laughs, croaky and forced. “Oh, so you’re open to taking orders from me now?”

Ruby groans, pulling back, and Weiss frowns at the loss of contact. “I’ve never had a problem with you being bossy.” Her eyes narrow, a smile hiding behind her pursed lips. “Now what were you saying about liking it when I touch you?”

Weiss feels her cheeks pink, and ducks her head to lose the trail of Ruby’s eyes. “We’re partners, Ruby.” She sniffs, squirming out of Ruby’s grip. “Studies show that paired hunters and huntresses exhibit deeper psychological and physical bonds.”

She knows she’s said the wrong thing when Ruby’s eyes brighten with interest, eyebrows arching, her mouth pulling into a grin. “Deeper bonds, huh?”

Ruby makes a move to grab Weiss’s wrists, and she snatches her hands away, automatically lowering into a loose parody of a fencing defensive position, sans sword. There’s a single moment of delay, just enough time for Weiss to realize her mistake.

Ruby’s eyes narrow dangerously, grinning in that toothy competitive thrill while petals start to flake off of her skin in red flurries. “You’re going to regret that, Ms. Schnee.”

The room holds its breath, and time seems to elongate and slow like it always does before—

Ruby lunges forward in a speed-blurred streak and Weiss barely has time to throw down a sigil. She just manages to spring back into the tension of the glyph before Ruby shoulder drives into the place Weiss was milliseconds before.

Ruby corrects before she can hit the wall, careening off of a low loveseat to intercept Weiss’s forward hand-spring. She grabs for Weiss’s shirt, and Weiss shrieks, jerking away and effectively bowling into a lamp. It hits the ground with a porcelain heavy thud, and Weiss summons another glyph to slow Ruby’s momentum. Ruby trips over the wardrobe as she swerves to avoid the sigil, and lands in a heap on the unmade bed, scattering pillows and shredding a feather-filled duvet.

Weiss sees her opening, and closes the distance between them, jumping on the bed to pin Ruby under her hips. She squeezes her legs hard at Ruby’s waist, and jails her in the cage of her arms.

Ruby winces theatrically, squirming uselessly. “You got me.”

Weiss smiles, still breathing hard. “You’re too easy.”

Ruby reaches up and cups Weiss’s hand in her calloused palm, thumbs at her cheekbone. “That’s what all the girls say.”

The bed dips under their weight, Ruby’s skirt a dark fan against the plush, white comforter. Her shirt rides up her ribs, exposing the delicate, lacy trim of her bra. Her hands move to palm at Weiss’s thighs, her shorts rucked high. Feathers filter through the air in a mimicry of snowfall, downy fringe catching in Weiss’s hair, her eyelashes.

Weiss stoops, dropping to her forearms, so close the tips of their noses brush. “Say you give.”

Ruby relents easily, pliant, relaxing under Weiss’s weight, the pads of her fingers still lightly swirling against Weiss’s thighs. “I give.” She closes her eyes, feigning death. “You’ve done me in.”

Weiss stares down at her, so close she’s almost cross-eyed. Ruby squints open one eye and quickly closes it. When she speaks, her lips barely move, “I’m dead.”

Weiss laughs despite herself, pinching at Ruby’s shoulder in an attempt to make her squirm. “Is that so?”

Ruby stubbornly doesn’t move, her face relaxing into a smooth, stone-y calm. Weiss fixates on the light dusting of freckles across the etch of Ruby’s cheekbones, the thin, careful skin of her eyelids. Sun streams through the balcony door, staining her in halved sunlight, gilding the wisps of hair that frame her face, a pseudo-nimbus, a crown.

Ruby is a storybook beauty, settled into her cursed, high-tower sleep. Weiss feels raw and exposed, like she’s fought through nettle and thistle to get here. Her palms start to sweat.

“Ruby,” she whines, suddenly uncomfortable, like there’s something she’s forgetting to do. “Get up.”

Ruby’s lips twitch into a half smile, and Weiss notices for the first time that she’s wearing lipstick, rouge-red tint staining her impish cupid’s bow. “Kiss me awake.” Ruby opens one eye again, just enough to peer at Weiss’s face. “That’s the way the story goes.”

Weiss sighs in forced exasperation and hopes it’s enough to cover the sudden pounding of her heart. She leans down, puckers her lips, and presses a kiss at the corner of Ruby’s mouth. “There. Better?”

Ruby rewards her with a miniscule shake of her head, eyes still closed, her lips curling up further. Weiss feels a flash of fierce annoyance at this stupid girl and her stupid games, and her stupid, stupid smile.

She kisses it away.

She covers Ruby’s mouth with her own, undone and reckless, losing control of the situation so fast the room spins. She’s blinded by a screaming, white-hot compulsion, her fingers scrambling for purchase in the sheets, for something to hold onto, for an anchor. Ruby’s hands tighten against Weiss’s thighs, fingernails biting. She arches against Weiss’s chest, gasping into her lips.

Weiss kisses hard, unrelenting, keeps her mouth stiff and her jaw clenched. Her eyes are closed tight, she can’t risk opening them, can’t risk seeing Ruby underneath her. She bites hard at Ruby’s bottom lip until she opens her mouth, licks in past her teeth, feels the give and wet of Ruby’s tongue. She presses down hard, her nose crushed tight against Ruby’s cheek, teeth catching on Ruby’s lower lip, arousal singeing in her belly.

Her eyes start to sting and she pinches them shut tightly, trying to block out the humid, blanketed press of reality, trying to narrow her world to the writhe of Ruby beneath her, the friction of her chest against her own through the linen of her pajama top, the heat of their breath as it doubles and ignites between them.

There’s ember in the way Ruby moves, a stoked fire, poker-sharp and chemical. She gives easily under Weiss’s insistence. Weiss, despite all her hard edges, is undone by the velvet-spool of Ruby’s upper-lip, jaw, cheek—the feminine softness, pliant.

The stroke of Ruby’s tongue in her mouth is like marionette strings attached to her fingers and knees, the small of her back—they tug and mold until she folds into her, dexterous wooden-joints sighing with pleasure. She thinks the ache and pull of this must be part of some larger design, an all-knowing hand above, something out of her control. It’s sin heaven-sent, and she gasps at the weight of this guilt.

She keens, half-way to sobbing, pressing Ruby back into the covers. A tear leaks from the corner of her eye, wets Ruby’s nose. Ruby wrenches away, suddenly confused.

“Weiss, sweetheart,” she mumbles, words abruptly muffled by Weiss’s lips against her own, swallowing syllables. She kisses back, all tender and care, turning her head to the side as Weiss redoubles her efforts. “Weiss, you’re crying.”

Weiss shudders out an ugly noise, half-keen, half-gasp, and presses her mouth into the crux of Ruby’s neck, laves the skin with kisses and bites.

She doesn’t stop until she feels Ruby push hard at her chest.

She jolts away gasping, one hand rising to cover her mouth. She scrambles backward until her back hits the wall, her pajamas twisted around her, mussed and ruined. She feels sick, bile rising in her throat, stomach roiling.

This isn’t how she pictured it. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.

She turns her head into her shoulder, presses the heels of her palms against her eyes until colors erupt in crimson novas against the back of her eyelids. She was the dragon all along.

The mattress gives and dips in front of her, and two hands encircle her wrists, pulling her palms away from her eyes.

“Weiss,” Ruby says, low and careful, her voice a salve. “Look at me.”

Weiss shakes her head hard, eyelids winced shut. “We can’t do this.” She’s babbling now, words on a dangerous tilt. “I didn’t mean to.”

Weiss Schnee has never been soft with anybody. Ruby is her one precious thing. But she went in too hard, all teeth and claw and snarl. She’s going to break this. She’s going to break _them_.

Ruby hums a few notes in the back of her throat, slow and soothing, strokes her thumbs over the tendons in Weiss’s wrists, and brings her hands up against her own cheeks. Ruby’s skin feels scalding hot under Weiss’s palms, her pulse thrumming hard at her temples.

“Weiss, please.”

Weiss opens her eyes. Ruby is so close, her eyes so wide and worried that the silver iris is almost transparent in the sunlight. Her lipstick is nearly kissed away and a red smudge blurs the corner of her mouth. Her face is dark against Weiss’s pale hands.

“You’re okay.” She turns her mouth into Weiss’s right hand, kisses her palm. “Everything’s okay.”

Weiss splays her fingers wide, helpless. “This isn’t what I meant,” she gasps, exhaling hard through her nose. She doesn’t know if she’s making sense. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She leans back into the headboard, thumping the back of her skull against the wood.

Ruby is quick to move, tugging Weiss away from the wall until she can settle behind her, her legs bracketing Weiss’s hips. Weiss leans back against her chest instinctively, relieved at this familiar position, a staple of fireside watch.

Ruby loops her arms around her waist, settles them at the jut of her hipbones. “You didn’t hurt me.” She nudges a kiss against the back of Weiss’s head. “You’re just overthinking it.” Another kiss. “Classic Weiss.”

Ruby palms her hip, and Weiss watches her hand distantly. The air feels thick and hot. The room is gauzy, like something out of a dream. Ruby tilts her head, flattens her mouth against Weiss’s neck, drags a kiss to the patch of skin under her ear, a hint of tongue, a scrape of teeth.

Weiss shivers, groans.

“You said you like it when I touch you, right?” Weiss nods, still watching Ruby’s hands, her fingers tucking into the V of Weiss’s hips. Another kiss, this time against her cheek. Ruby’s voice is low, cautious. “So let me touch you.”

Weiss settles further back against her, turns her head to offer her mouth for a kiss. Ruby responds eagerly despite the angle. It’s a sloppy thing, open mouthed and messy, and Weiss is so content to follow. Her anger has numbed and cooled, and the real world feels like something that only exists outside of the liminal bounds of this hotel room.

“Why do you want to?” she asks, tucking her face down to paint a kiss against Ruby’s chin in-between words. “Touch me, I mean.”

She can see Ruby swallow, follows the bob of her throat. “Because I—” Ruby stops abruptly, looking for all the world like she’s scared Weiss will bolt. Starts again. “Because you’re my partner.”

The excuse is wearing so thin, even Weiss is having trouble not seeing through it. But then Ruby is moving her hands more insistently against her and Weiss stutters and stalls.

The growl of the zipper on Weiss’s shorts sounds obscene in the quiet room.

Ruby flicks open the button between her thumb and forefinger, and stills at Weiss’s waistband, stroking careful at the hem of her underwear. “Is this okay?”

Weiss nods. Feeling outside herself, like a member of the audience, watching from the balcony instead of here: tucked against Ruby’s chest, her fingers so close to the ache between her legs. She slumps into her, slouching her hips low, watches Ruby’s hand disappear below her shorts—finger tips, knuckles, wrist.

Ruby’s palm cups her, an instant, provisional relief. The pads of her middle and ring fingers stroke once over the gusset of her underwear, clumsy and artless. Weiss keens. Ruby is murmuring a string of gibberish against the shell of her ear—about how she’s perfect, about how she wants her to feel good, feel good, you’re okay, is that alright, I’ll take care of you, I swear to God, holy shit, _Weiss_ —

Weiss wants to tell her shut _up_ , wants to tell her to stop babbling and fuck her, but she also doesn’t know if she’ll ever hear Ruby like this again, doesn’t want to rob herself of Ruby’s breathless entreaties. Every time Ruby says her name, she feels another liquid-pulse of heat, the words slurring together in a whisper-strained prayer.

Weiss turns her head, crushes her open mouth against Ruby’s shoulder, gasping muted, damp breaths into the cotton of her shirt. Her mouth leaves a wet ring. She bites down once, hard, nipping at the flesh, and Ruby moans, moving her hips against Weiss in a slow grind. She shifts her hand, about to slip below the fabric to touch her in earnest when—

Someone knocks. Loud. “Literally could you guys hurry the fuck up.”

There’s a lower murmur outside the door. Then, “sorry if that was rude, I’m just hungry as _shit_.”

Ruby pulls away from her so quickly Weiss would be offended if she wasn’t scrambling away just as fast. Ruby tumbles off of the side of the bed, landing on a discarded Crescent Rose with a thump and a muted curse. Weiss springs off the opposite side of the bed, flattening her back to the wall, desperately trying to straighten her clothes, smooth her hair.

They meet eyes across the mattress, across the devastation of mussed sheets and askew pillows, duvet stuffing still filtering through the air like dust motes in a sunbeam. For one shaky, terrible moment, Weiss thinks she is going to scream. Ruby has her hand half-held in the air. Her fingertips are wet.

Ruby breaks eye contact, she steps toward the door.

She doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t look at her. She doesn’t look at her.

**

Ruby is absolutely decimated when she answers the door. Her bangs are ruffled, but her hair is pressed flat in the back, and a red smear of lipstick stains her bottom lip. She leans against the doorjamb in some pathetic attempt at nonchalance.

Blake’s ears twitch. She wrinkles her nose. God, she can fucking smell it on them. Idiots.

Yang catches the twitch of Blake’s ears out of the corner of her eye, and looks at Ruby hard, eyes squinting, shifts her glance to the ruined bed behind them.

“Uh, what were you guys up to?” She rubs her hand at the back of her neck, a nervous tick that Ruby mimics. “We thought we heard—noises.”

Weiss speaks up from her perch against the wall. Her arms are crossed tight against her stomach, and her cheeks are pink and flushed like she’s been running.

“We were sparring,” she says. She turns her face into her shoulder as she does, avoiding Blake’s eyes. She looks embarrassed. “Ruby provoked me. “

Ruby immediately perks up, straightening, already running a hand through her hair and smoothing the choppy edges. “Yeah, just some roughhousing.” She cuts her eyes toward Weiss, sly. “I was totally kicking her ass.”

Weiss scoffs but says nothing, starts edging toward the bathroom.

Yang turns to Blake, looking satisfied. “See, no problem!” She grins, the kind Blake loves, all teeth and chin, her cheeks and eyes dimpling. “Everybody is okay.”

Blake looks at her, slow and easy, feeling that glow of affection that warms all the way to her fingertips. Yang is wearing the soft-cottony yellow tee Blake brought back from Menagerie, and she has a flannel tied around her waist that Blake is almost certain was originally hers. Her prosthetic is buffed and clean—this morning, after Weiss had slipped out of their bed to ravage another’s, Yang had lounged patiently on the ground, her chin propped on Blake’s knee, while Blake re-tuned the tiny, delicate gears of the metal arm.

The metalwork is detailed and infinitesimal, and the tools required for fine-tuning and cleaning always put Yang’s teeth on edge. Her hair was wet, her skin shower-warm, and for a moment it had been an oasis of their own making.

That the peace would hold was obviously too much to ask.

Now, here, Blake curls her hand around Yang’s fingertips, the supple give of the buttery metal a familiar comfort, and tries not to think about how blind her girlfriend is being, and how loudly Weiss’s aura is aching.

She opts to frown at Ruby instead, and Ruby ducks her chin to her chest in response, avoiding Blake’s eyes. She looks guilty. Then Ruby forces a smile, looking pointedly away from the bathroom where a sliver of Weiss’s bare back can be seen beyond the cracked door.

They stand like that, suspended on the threshold in a stilted silence. Blake nudges closer to Yang, and tucks her head against her shoulder. After a minute, Weiss steps out of the bathroom in a pink sundress, her hair neatly brushed, a crown of braids winding around her scalp. Her hair piece is firmly affixed above her temple, and her mouth is set. She looks impeccably put together, a frigid, fixed beautiful, and the pale blue of her eyes is enough to make Blake shiver. It’s a hint of the old Weiss, and she brushes past Ruby, ignoring Blake’s look of concern.

Weiss shatters the lull, pushing through the hotel room door, and making it halfway down the hall before she turns. “Are you coming to brunch or what?”

Yang whoops and follows, and Blake lets herself be tugged behind, trying to ignore Ruby’s heartbroken expression, and the smear of red lipstick that stains Weiss’s neck.

**

The city is suffocating. It feels like a vacuum, the heat sucking all the air from the dusty, cobbled streets. There’s no sign of the night’s rain, and the sky burns a breathless, cruel blue. They squint into the daylight, a quartet of bleary summer reluctance.

They walk beside the wide, shallow channel of the canal, and Ruby straggles behind. She drags her feet, watching her boots kick up silky dust, her spine itching under the heavy leather of her ammunition strap. The soil along the bank is a sandy loam, and the air is thick with the heady smell of the buoyant green algae that clings to the surface of the water.

Ahead, Yang is navigating. She’s holding her scroll out in front of her face as she jogs backward, trying to determine the direction of the brunch place Sun recommended. She says something that makes Weiss laugh, and tosses a heavy arm around her shoulder, bullies Weiss into a half-hearted moving hug.

Ruby feels a hot, dirty flash of jealousy, one that doubles when Blake shoots her a disapproving look over her shoulder and reaches out to take Weiss’s hand in her own. Ruby’s ears burn and falls a few more steps behind, feeling irrationally petulant, lip pouting.

She wishes Weiss would notice. Wishes she would look at her.

How long can they keep not talking about this? Ruby thinks about Weiss—an expert at evasive emotional conversation maneuvers—and grimaces. Probably forever.

Yang leads them toward a narrow alley that carves between two buildings, a thin spoke on the city’s hub, bringing them closer to the heart of Vacuo. The buildings get taller, and more people mill around the storefronts, filling the streets with clamor and life.

A corner-store laundromat perfumes the air with sweet detergent, and a bakery’s doors swing open, bringing a thick, yeasty aroma and a girl, her arms full of dark crusted bread wrapped in wax paper. Ruby catches her eye and smiles—she reminds her of Penny, with short bright hair, and long, lanky legs. The girl smiles back.

She hears a disgruntled noise from ahead, and Weiss is turning, stepping back from between Blake and Yang and grabbing at Ruby’s wrist. “We’re about to eat, Ruby,” Weiss says. “You can make friends later.”

Her words are sharp, and she drags Ruby to catch up with the others. Ruby spares the girl a brief salute before freeing her wrist from Weiss’s tight grasp, twisting in her hold to grab her hand instead. Weiss doesn’t look at her, but Ruby catches her smile out of the corner of her eye.

It feels like a victory.

**

The table is drowning in empty drinks. Yang and Blake share a reserve of highball glasses, the rims stained red with tomato juice. Yang is already vodka flushed and laughing, a small pile of green-olive garnishes cupped in her palm. Blake watches on fondly, chin cupped in her palm.

On Ruby’s side of the table, gravity threatens a tower of champagne flutes, and she is sipping at a fresh mimosa—“It’s _mango_ , Weiss”—with appropriate gusto. Weiss shuffles a few to the side to give the server room to set down the food. She bites back an admonishment as Ruby reaches eagerly for her plate, burning her finger on the steaming porcelain.

The server winces. “Careful, it’s hot.”

Ruby sticks her finger in her mouth and grins around it. “Worth it.”

Weiss rolls her eyes, making room for her own plate—an egg-white spinach frittata, a stark contrast to Ruby’s teetering stack of pancakes, topped by a thick pat of butter.

They snagged an outdoor table on the patio of the bistro, and Ruby had insisted Weiss take the chair in the small slice of shade provided by the striped, dusty awning. It’s those little gestures, offered without fanfare or motive, that make Weiss sure she isn’t worth any of the trouble.

Blake has her chair scooted so close to Yang’s that Weiss is surprised none of the other diners have lodged a complaint. Yang’s large palm is splayed across Blake’s entire bare midriff, and Blake keeps nuzzling kisses against the dark, inked tattoos that span Yang’s shoulders and back. Weiss thinks if someone doesn’t complain soon, she’s going to call the Vacuo police herself.

“You might as well just sit in her lap,” Weiss finally snaps.

Yang grins. “Good idea.” She moves for Blake’s waist, making to lift her over the arm of the chair, and Ruby pelts her with Bloody Mary garnishes. Yang catches a cheese chunk in her mouth and throws Ruby a thumbs up. “Good aim, sis.”

Ruby boos, drawing the attention of other guests, and Weiss stifles a laugh, reaching across the table to hush her. “I was being sarcastic.” She buries her face in her hands to hide her smile. “You all are ridiculous.”

Blake raises her head from Yang’s shoulder and points at Weiss, eyes squinted. “Hey, you’re the one who slept with _us_ last night.”

She says it overloud—at least by Blake standards—and they definitely have the attention of a neighboring table now. Weiss makes a vague apologetic hand gesture and they turn back to their meal.

Ruby pouts. “I can’t believe you slept with them over me.”

Weiss hates the burn of satisfaction she feels at Ruby’s obvious jealousy. “Hey, I didn’t _sleep_ with anyone.”

Ruby pouts harder, lower lip jutting, brow creasing in an over-exaggerated frown. “You could have slept with me.”

Weiss’s eyebrows jump. “Okay,” she hurries to change the subject, takes a sip of her water to buy time. “It really isn’t fair that I have to babysit you all every time you drink.”

Only Ruby looks repentant. “Sorry, Weiss.”

Weiss just shakes her head. “Eat your pancakes.”

She watches Blake feed Yang pieces of steamed bun, laughing when Yang nips at her fingers, and averts her eyes, turning her attention to Ruby’s assault on her thick, doughy pancakes. She has a smear of chocolate at the corner of her mouth, her fingers shiny with syrup, and Weiss feels a sickening surge of affection. She reaches across the gap between their chairs, thumbs at the corner of Ruby’s mouth.

“Stay still.”

Ruby freezes on command, eyes wide, cheeks still bulging with her last bite. Weiss wets her thumb with the condensation from her glass, rubs the pad of her finger at the chocolate on Ruby’s cheek. Weiss sighs, over-exaggerated and fond. Ruby leans into her touch instinctually, swallowing hard and baring her teeth in a mock growl.

“You are such a monster,” Weiss says, stifling her laugh under a stern, fixed frown.

Ruby smiles and, worse, turns her head to press a kiss Weiss’s palm, just over her heart line. “Yeah, but I’m yours.”

Weiss is suddenly reminded of their unfinished business.

It wasn’t their first kiss. And maybe that’s the worst part.

There’s been a handful of others—sleepy goodnight pecks that missed their mark, a we-didn’t-die battlefield embrace, a dare from Ilia that got out of hand. And, worst of all, Ruby’s whiskey-drunk 21st, Ruby pouring herself into Weiss’s lap. But this morning was the furthest they had ever let it go, a reminder that this limbo—this in-between, this push-push, pull-pull—can’t last forever.

Ruby jars Weiss back to reality with a soft touch against the back of her hand, fingertips sticky with crystallized sugar. “You good, Weiss?”

Weiss nods slowly, feeling that familiar sheer, veiled reality. She can’t stop looking at Ruby’s mouth, at the pink of her tongue as she licks at a stray bead of syrup. “I’m fine.”

Ruby nods, relieved, and moves her hand below the lip of the table, settling it on Weiss’s leg. She palms her thigh, touch burning. It’s a possessive sear of skin-on-skin, and Weiss thinks that Ruby could sink inside her, her fingertips dipping through flesh, to rearrange the entire anatomy of her being.

Ruby looks at her, still half-smiling, her bangs falling into her eyes, and it’s like she’s deep in Weiss’s ribcage, toying at the skeleton of her, those same long, dexterous fingers wrapped around her heart.

Under the table, Ruby’s hand squeezes once, thumb tracing a pattern just below the hem of Weiss’s pink, cotton dress. But above them, the strings toy and play, tugging between her legs, in the hollow of her chest, in the way Ruby tilts closer to whisper something in her ear.

Ruby shifts her hand to curl around Weiss’s waist instead, and she almost stops her, sure it will come away bloody, sure that her heart was just inside that palm.

She jars out of her reverie, conscious that there is nothing on Ruby’s fingers but syrup, that they aren’t alone.

Across the table Blake’s ears tilt forward, then flatten, disappearing into her mess of dark curls. She stands abruptly, almost upsetting her glass, shooting Yang an obvious, pointed stare.

Blake says, “I have to use the restroom.” She over-annunciates, arching an eyebrow at Yang, before striding toward the back entrance of the restaurant, her heeled knee-high boots clicking hard against the stone patio. Yang watches her go, brow furrowed, before clueing in.

She stands just as abruptly, her chair scraping noisily. “Oh, yeah.” She shoots at a look at Weiss and Ruby, ears pinking. “I also have to—pee.”

Ruby watches them go with obvious disgust. Her nose wrinkles, and she sticks out her tongue. “I hope this place knows to bleach their bathroom counter after they’re done with it.”

Weiss pulls a sympathetic face. “They are so tacky.” She taps at her chin. “I really worry about their libido.”

“Gross.” Ruby leans sideways in her chair, tilts her head onto Weiss’s shoulder. The weight of her is a sunlit comfort against her skin, and Weiss sighs, closes her eyes. She rests her cheek against Ruby’s hair, smells the synthetic cloy of her shampoo, the subtle bite of the copper alloy that jackets her ammunition. Distantly, she wishes they could stay like this forever.

But of course—

“Weiss,” Ruby’s voice sounds small, young. There’s a hesitance that immediately puts her on guard. “When are we going to talk about this?”

Weiss pulls away so fast that Ruby almost tips in her chair, only saved from a fall by a wild grab at the lip of the table. Weiss feels a keen pang of annoyance—of shame—bite into her chest. Worse, she can feel the sharp prick of tears threatening to well behind her eyes.

She stands, looking anywhere but Ruby, fixating instead on the glare of sunlight against the flat, glass windows of a neighboring building. She sees her reflection as she stands. Her face looks ugly and twisted, and she feels more like the audience than an active member of this production.

“Can’t you just let it go.” She throws a handful of Lien onto the table. She makes the mistake of looking at Ruby for a single beat—finds her heartbroken, hands still white-knuckling the patio table. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

She flees.

**

Ruby finds her at the edge of the canal. She’s standing by the edge of the water, arms crossed tight over her stomach, shoulders hunched. She looks so small like this, and Ruby approaches slowly, hovering a few paces behind.

It hadn’t been a hard chase, and she’d let Weiss take the lead, knows enough by now to give her time to cool and temper.

Still, fine tendrils of hair are plastered to the back of Weiss’s neck, and a strap of her sundress is slipping down one shoulder, exposing fair skin and a web of pale, raised scars. The canal is swollen with rain, and Weiss stares hard at the water. Ruby can see the muscles in her jaw popping as she clenches her teeth hard, her brow knit tight. Even with her obstinate and sullen, the creases in her forehead like sculpted, dark-veined marble, Ruby can’t help but drink Weiss in like it’s the only thing left in this desert keeping her alive.

“You weren’t going to try to leave, were you?” Ruby asks. Weiss doesn’t turn. “Before we even got the chance to talk?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

Ruby takes a step forward, feeling helpless and dumb. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and she knows she’s going to say the wrong thing. She closes her eyes, exhales slow.

“Are you still feeling lost about your place on the team? Because you’re my partner, you know that.”

“Oh my god.” Weiss explodes fast, loud, like Ruby knew she would. When she turns to face her, hands clenched into fists, face set into an icy, frigid mask, it’s almost a relief. “Stop trying to fix everything.”

“But I—”

“You don’t get to step off the page of your fairy tale and rescue me, Ruby. It’s not that fucking easy.”

Ruby tries to step closer to reach for Weiss’s hands, but she pulls away violently, shoves at Ruby’s shoulder.

“This isn’t a story,” Weiss says. Her eyes are welling with bright, angry tears and her cheeks are flushed red.

Ruby offers her hands, palms out, pleading. “I never wanted it to be.”

Weiss shakes her head and turns back to the water, re-crosses her arms. Her breaths are shuddery, gasping, and Ruby risk a small step closer. When Weiss speaks, her voice sounds small.

“I don’t want your expectations, Ruby.” Her face hardens. “Actually, I don’t want anyone’s.” She reaches into her hair and tugs hard, pulls out her hairpiece, and looks down at the spiked, snowflake crest. “I can’t be who you all want me to be.”

There’s a beat where they both look at the crystalline ornament, Weiss’s fingers curling so tight around it that it digs into her flesh, threatens to puncture the skin, before she flings it away hard. The both watch it sail through the air until it lands into the canal with a splash, sinking below the dark water.

Another beat. Then. “Shit.”

Ruby turns to face Weiss, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. She looks suspiciously like she’s trying to hold back a laugh. “You regret throwing that don’t you.”

Weiss winces. “Maybe.”

Ruby laughs, a real one, belly deep and loud. She shakes her head, over-fond and grinning. “You are so dramatic.” She rolls her eyes, unclipping Crescent Rose before she slings her ammo belt over her head, pushing it into Weiss’s hands. “Hold this.”

She strides toward the ledge and jumps, drowning their anti-climax, dropping the few feet into the water below. She sinks up to her waist and grimaces as the splash wets the ends of her hair, blinking muddy water out of her eyes. “Gross.”

Weiss watches from the shore, mouth agape. Ruby wades through the silt; oily, opaque ripples radiating out in waves. She stops about midway across the lock chamber and disappears under the surface.

A minute passes and Weiss starts to fidget, shifting from one foot to another. “Ruby?” she calls, quiet, then louder. “Ruby, come on.”

She’s taking a small step toward the ledge, ammo belt dangling, when Ruby surfaces, gasping. She holds up her hand victoriously, the hairpiece glinting between her fingers. “Got it!” She starts to wade back toward the grassy shore, and smiles. “No sweat.”

Weiss watches, disbelieving. Ruby smiles up at her, hair soaked through and slicked back, water beading on her chest and arms, accenting the hard line of her muscle, tissue-paper thin shirt sticking to her skin. Ruby’s expression softens as their eyes connect, head tilting. “What?”

Weiss drops the ammo belt on the ground, looking profoundly annoyed, head shaking. “I can’t believe the things I do for you.” She steps to the ledge and jumps into the water, shuddering in disgust as her dress slicks up to the chest.

Ruby laughs, delighted, and starts wading toward her. “What are you doing?”

Weiss smiles, shrugs. “I guess we’re in it together, now.”

They meet in the middle.

Weiss rolls her eyes to the sky in faux-annoyance, but allows Ruby to pull her into a hug, their wet clothes squelching between them. They separate slowly, and Weiss winds her arms around Ruby’s neck, tangles her fingers in her hair.

“I don’t want anything but what you’re willing to give,” Ruby says.

Weiss chokes back a sob behind her smile. “God, I hate you.”

Ruby deposits the hairpiece back at the crown of Weiss’s braid, tilts forward until their foreheads meet and wraps her arms around Weiss’s waist. “Even if that means we go to Atlas and I freeze to death,” she pulls her flush, hip to belly to breast. “I’ll buy a parka.”

Their skin is warm against the chill of the water and Weiss shivers into her, finding the smell of roses under the marshy, algae wet.

“Say you’ll stay,” Ruby whispers. She drops a kiss on Weiss’s brow, another on her cheek.

Weiss turns her mouth against Ruby’s neck to hide her smile. “I couldn’t leave you. You idiots wouldn’t last two seconds without me.”

Ruby grins, pulling back far enough to find Weiss’s eyes. “Just say it, Weiss.”

“I’ll stay.”

Ruby laughs, hitching Weiss out of the water, her legs wrapping around her waist. She spins her until water showers off of them in a spray of radiant, lucid drops. “Now kiss me. Right here. In the open.”

Weiss swallows and tightens her grip. “We could ruin everything.”

Ruby shrugs. “Then let’s ruin it.”

There’s a finite moment, a beat of space where they both look at each other, hard. Their limbo shatters, crumbles, but they’re both too busy to notice.

Weiss kisses her soft, breakable, nudging closer until there’s only heat between them. Ruby swallows her smile, running her tongue along the seam of Weiss’s mouth until she parts her lips, licking into the heat of her. Weiss hums at the back of her throat, mewling when Ruby hitches her higher, broad palms sliding down to cup the back of her thighs. Ruby tastes like the bite of champagne, the corner of her lips sticky with syrup, and her hands squeeze at Weiss once, firm.

The lap of water against the cement walls of the channel dampens the soft smack and press, the velvet crush of lips; slick, open mouths. It’s a thunderstorm of a kiss, rolling and aching, all crash and simmer. Weiss nips at Ruby’s bottom lip and she gasps a laugh, pulling back to find Weiss’s eyes, pupil-blown and summer-blue.

“Is this my reward for having the conversation I’ve been avoiding?” Weiss asks, teasing, breathless.

Ruby laughs. “Just wait to see your reward after you admit how long you’ve had feelings for me.”

The corners of Weiss’s mouth tilt up into a pleased, angular smirk, and her sundress sticks to her skin, her breast, water running in rivulets down the hollow of her throat. There’s a stain of blush at her chest, and Ruby ducks her head to kiss it away.

The sound of cheering interrupts them and they jar back fast, turning toward the shore. Weiss wriggles out of Ruby’s grip, but keeps her arms firmly wrapped around her neck, glaring at their shoreline audience. Blake and Yang stand at the edge of the canal, Yang fist pumping, and Blake smiling, sly and quiet.

“Literally it’s about time,” Yang says. She cracks her knuckles before untying her flannel and letting it drop to the ground. “Now stand back.” She hits the water with a splash, re-soaking Weiss who, for once, is too busy laughing to fret over her hair.

Yang catches them up in a hug, smothering a kiss against Ruby’s cheek. Ruby grins, and turns expectantly toward the ledge, raising an eyebrow at the solitary figure. “You coming?”

Blake shakes her head, laughing. “Do any of you understand the express purpose of a canal? Because this isn’t it.”

Weiss frowns, gestures. “We’re doing this _one_ thing as a team, Blake.”

Blake sighs, shrugging off her jacket before kicking away her shorts as well, an afterthought—“They’re designer.”

Yang grins, cocksure and smug. “Nice, babe.”

Blake slips in far more gracefully than Yang, pulling a series of disgusted faces as the water soaks her thighs, creeping up her stomach. She wades toward them quickly, wrapping one arm around Yang’s shoulder, the other finding Weiss’s cheek.

They stay like that for a while, and then for a while longer, clinging to each other in the murky, wasteland sanctuary—shivering and soaked and laughing at the sheer living of it all.

**

After, they lay at the makeshift bank, sprawled in the sun, basking in heat and sunlight. Yang lifts her head from its perch on Blake’s shoulder, squints toward Ruby who has one hand absentmindedly sifting through Weiss’s hair, spread out to dry.

“So what’s next, Ruby?”

Ruby rises onto her forearms, and Weiss grumbles at the disturbance, relocating to Ruby’s thigh.

Ruby smiles. “Let’s get out of this damn city.” She squints toward the hotel. “Maybe a change of clothes first.”

Around them, the desert breathes.

Ruby runs an internal diagnostic, flashing through the checklist of chores they have ahead of them—resupplying is a necessity, a full weapons check and tune-up, then, of course, there’s the matter of finding a new contract.

She inhales slowly, matching the desert’s rhythm, watching a cardinal alight on the scraggly limb of a nearby tree, a shock of red at odds with the rest of its surroundings. Weiss follows her gaze lazily, eyes half-lidded.

“It’s beautiful, don’t you think?” Ruby asks, voice low.

Weiss smiles, turns her head to drop a kiss against the inside of Ruby’s knee. “Yeah, it is.”

Ruby asks, “where do you wanna go next, Weiss?” She feels lulled by the still air, the weight of Weiss’s cheek against her skin.

Weiss closes her eyes, rolling her shoulders in a slow shrug. “I’ll follow you.”

Yang seconds her with a thumbs up, delivered without raising her head, and Blake agrees with a low murmur.

Somewhere, far to the east, a pack of Grimm assemble around a small town, a storm brews over Vale, and the cruel, barbed Vacuo sun evaporates the last of the night’s precipitation. The families on the city’s edge recline in their low, plastic chairs and watch the sky for any sign of rain.

But here, now, Weiss reaches blindly for Ruby’s hand and curls it to her chest. The marionette strings above her clipped free from her father’s heel, her mother’s tragedy, and the requisite pull of someone else’s hand. There’s the promise of an epilogue in the kiss she presses at the ridge of Ruby’s knuckles.

Despite the distant snarling horde, the brewing storm, and the dry desert, the oasis to the south is smooth and calm. The shade below the canopy of the lone willow promises a cool sanctuary, however brief.

Ruby sits up fully now and grins, wolfish and eager, toward the horizon. “You’ll follow me anywhere?”

They do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking with me until brunch. find me on tumblr @ nevervalentines if u wanna talk about where they go next. i dont know the answer, but u might. its been a good ride. <3


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